Twas the day after Christmas and all through the mail, the diet companies shill programs almost sure to fail. Besides the obvious question – How can you live with yourselves making 60 billion dollars a year selling a product that hardly ever works? - I have some other questions for all the diets I’m seeing advertised right now. Of course, I would never tell anyone else what to eat or what path to health they should choose – these are just my questions:
NutriSystem and Jenny Craig: With all of this talk about how the healthiest thing is to eat farm to table/slow food/food as close to whole as possible, why are you suggesting to fat people that we should eat meals that are highly processed, frozen, and packaged in plastic to be microwaved back to warmth?
Medifast, your plan of five shakes a day and one lean protein and vegetable meal not only replaces almost all actual food with reconstituted soy protein, but it puts people at a caloric level that is less than what has been used to study starvation, and is so low fat that women may stop menstruating and lose their hair. Your “health coaches” become “health coaches” by buying into your multi-level marketing program to resell the product (I personally know someone who was a social psychologist one day and a health coach the next.) Explain again how this is healthy?
Slimfast: You want us to believe that replacing two-thirds of our food with a drink that has a laxative effect, a ton of sugar, and a poor glycemic profile, will bring greater health. Are you serious?
The Cabbage Soup Diet: Just one of your 7 days says “Eat as many as eight bananas and drink as many glasses of skim milk as you would like on this day, along with your soup.” What the fuck?
Alli Diet Pills: Your side effects include uncontrolled anal seepage, spontaneous bowel movements, and life-threatening liver damage and your information suggests that people should wear dark pants, all for 4 pounds more weight lost A YEAR than those who didn’t take Alli (and it sounds like a fair amount of that weight leaks out.) What the actual fuck?
Weight Watchers: When your study showed that participants lost around about 10 pounds in six months and kept off half of that for two years, your chief scientist - Karen Miller-Kovach – said: “It’s nice to see this validation of what we’ve been doing.” If you are so comfortable with those numbers, why doesn’t your advertising say “Join Weight Watchers and maybe lose 5 pounds in two years” with before and after pictures of people who have lost 5 pounds?
Paleo Diet: So you are suggesting that we mimic the eating of people who had an average life expectancy of 30 years – about 30% of the current US life expectancy? (EDIT: Many people mentioned that they think of the Paleo diet as about health and not weight loss, as I said at the beginning I am of course cool with people choosing whatever diet. This is a reaction to mailers that I am getting about paleo programs put on by local gyms that insist that the “obesity epidemic is caused by modern food” and that the “Paleo diet is the key to long life”.)
Maybe if I asked representatives from these diets they would have answers – but then I have to ask if it matters what those answers are, when the diets don’t have any evidence that they lead to significant long-term weight loss or health benefits? So maybe I’ll just stick to healthy habits and never give those blood-sucking leeches another cent of my money. Yeah, think I’ll do that.
To listen to this blog as a podcast, click here.
We’re over 1,400 signatures and picking up steam, please consider signing the petition to keep kids off The Biggest Loser and reposting it around the web.
Like the blog? Check this stuff out:
Holiday Sale – Book and DVDs
I’m having a Holiday Sale. You’ll get 20% off whatever you buy plus an upgrade from media mail to priority shipping in the US. Support my work, get cool stuff, win-win. Click here to check it out.
The e-book is still name your own price
Become a Member (not on sale, but still pretty cool!)
I created a membership program so that people who read the blog and feel they get value out of it and want to support the work I do can become members for ten bucks a month Members are the first to know about new projects, get to see things before they are released, get “Member Deals” which are special deals to my members from size positive merchants. Once you are a member I send out an e-mail once a month with the various deals and how to redeem them – your contact info always stays completely private. Join Now!
Good post; good points. Diet-sellers are such misogynists.
Eight bananas in a day could kill someone with a heart problem. How do I know this? My aunt had congestive cardiac disease and thought bananas would get rid of the fluid. She died 3 days into the regime of hers, the doctors said that the bananas played a big part in her death. They said maximum of two bananas a day even for healthy people.
Not that I’d ever want to eat more than 2 a day but just curious as a banana lover what it is about them that makes them dangerous in larger quantities for healthy people?
Very high in potassium and in large quantities would affect the electrolyte balance even in healthy people. So I was told.
Liz, that doctor, like most, knows very little about nutrition. It’s a travesty that most people trust their doctor’s advice about nutrition. A study of medical schools showed that most med students get only about 10-20 hours of nutrition education during their entire four years.
I always believed the “bananas are the highest in potassium” myth but found out it’s false. Bananas don’t even make the top 10 list of foods with the most potassium–and please note that potassium is very good for almost everybody.
The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) is 4,700 mg for both men and women. The average banana contains 422 mg.
Here’s a list of the highest foods in potatssium: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR21/nutrlist/sr21w306.pdf
My aunt’s diet in the few days before she died consisted almost entirely of bananas, and she had congestive cardiac disease – the 30 or so bananas we reckoned she was eating probably did speed her death. As for the 2 daily advice, that is partly about maintaining a balanced diet, I eat one or two each day, they are excellent for me personally before a long workout. My personal trainer is a also a nutritionist. I exercise for an hour most days, a couple of times a week I do longer, I eat a very healthy diet, and I am a fat person. I got fat by dieting.
Well, I basically hate the weight loss industry with a burning passion, and I might be misunderstanding what is meant by “paleo” diet, but from discussions I’ve had based only on a nutrition standpoint that type of diet (one that consists of as much simple or pure food as possible) is a good plan for health, not “weight loss”.
Assuming that diet was the complete or exact correlating factor to lifespan of ancient people is a bit silly. It would suggest a complete disregard to advances made in medical science.
The people I know who advocate a simpler nutritional plan do so for health reasons absolutely divorced from the pursuit of weight loss.
That being said, I think the weight loss industry is so successful that any nutritional advice can and will be distorted and perverted, and sold to the masses as just one more weight loss fad.
Of course, its possible I don’t understand quite what is meant by “paleo” diet. But I thought it referred to an eating plan geared towards avoiding highly processed grains and refined sugars based on the concept that our bodies are not chemically evolved to use those foods efficiently.
I personally try to avoid crazy processed stuff, because I find my body feeling much healthier and more energetic, not for and weight loss goal.
The Paleo diet is a diet that vilifies grains, white potatoes and other starches under the idea that the body can’t process these foods based on hazy, lazy, science.
It’s not just against highly processed grains, like white flour that has been stripped of all nutrients then had artificial nutrients added back in, but ALL grains because the belief is that Paleo people didn’t eat these types of foods because they didn’t farm and that humanity started going downhil with the advent of farming.
(And by going down hill they mean humanity startet getting fat, and sick, with more tooth decay.)
So the Paleo diet advocates no grain-based foods at all, no white potatoes, no sugar, and suggests that you eat shitload of lean protiens (preferably game meats), beans, nuts, berries, leafy greens and the occasional yam.
In other words, it’s Adkin’s with a pseudo-scientific sounding name.
Adkins with a psuedo-scientific name and no dairy.
I will say that I rather doubt you can correlate the average life expectancy of prehistoric man with their diet though. So much other stuff killed them that wouldn’t kill us today. I wouldn’t want to live their life. That is for sure.
The Paleo diet also leaves out things that actual Paleolithic people were eating and that people pursuing a “stone age” lifestyle still eat. There is evidence for lactic acid fermentation of foods from Ice Age archeological sites, for example, and “stone age” people living on various parts of the globe did and do practice simple cultivation of the “wild” crops they did and do eat. Along with this there is a lack of specific parts of the animal. A Yup’ik or Inupiaq elder–sorry, my head for names is bad so I can’t say which–did an analysis of Atkins, a close cousin to Paleo as said above, for Smithsonian years ago and pointed out that this type of eating wastes huge amounts of perfectly good animal food, each type with its own nutritional profile–eyeballs, assorted glands, blood, different fats, etc. In addition, the food is not simple and natural and fresh; it’s often highly processed, by lactic acid fermentation as I noted above, or by being combined with other foods, or smoked, or dried or salted or . . .
Tl;dr: Paleo isn’t.
I’m just wondering if the paleo diet is actually selling anything? Is there a company selling diet foods marked paelo? I thought it was just a lifestyle choice, like being vegetarian. ???
I eat a mostly paleo diet, I’m not super strict about it, but with my thyroid disease, it is the one thing I’ve done that has had amazing results on my symptoms. I started by just giving up gluten and that helped so much so I just kept going. I had half my thyroid removed due to the disease and have struggled with all kinds of terrible symptoms and giving up grains seems to be the thing that has helped most. I have up processed sugar as well and this week I’ve allowed some of that back in, due to the holidays and I’m already starting to have issues with muscle pain and other symptoms.
Most people I know who lean toward paleo eating, don’t do it for weight loss. I know that some people do it for that. I follow a guy on FB who shares recipes and his whole purpose if for weight loss. But almost everyone I know that eat a paleo diet also have some form of auto-immune disease. Grains, for whatever reason, do affect auto immune disease.
Are there companies selling foods marked paleo? Absolutely.
http://paleofoodmall.com/
And yes, some of the foods on this list are raw and vegan, but there are still some specifically labeled paleo.
I too limit grains for health reasons. I have insulin resistance in addition to autoimmune diseases (including Graves). I tried a paleolithic diet without hope for any beneficial outcomes a few years ago (because I had tried other diets, including vegan, and they had failed miserably), but amazingly, it really did result in a decrease in pain and inflammation. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s low-glycemic, or low-grain (I eat 0-2 servings of grain per day, so I haven’t completely abstained and I’m still doing great). The health benefits are so dramatic for me that eating this way does not result in me feeling deprived (also what probably helps is the fact that I’m getting all the micro and macro nutrients I need). Also, I should mention that I don’t limit sweet potatoes (someone else commented that the paleo diet says you shouldn’t eat potatoes). There is a difference between Loren Cordain’s weight-loss oriented “Paleo Diet,” and the hunter/gatherer inspired diet that many people have experimented with for years in a desperate attempt to not feel like shit all of the time.
Also, I can’t resist mentioning that archeologists can tell when an ancient population has switched to an agricultural (grain based) diet by looking for skeletal deformities. I also recall looking at an exhibit in one of the Smithsonian museums in DC, which showed major height decreases in a group of prehistoric people in southeastern Europe when they switched from a hunter/gatherer diet to a grain based diet. If I recall correctly the men and women went from being 6’0” and 5’7″ (respectively), to 5’6″ and 5’2″, or something like that. I remember being amazed these prehistoric people were taller than Americans, when they ate a hunter/gatherer diet, and shorter when they ate a grain-based one.
So why are we getting taller now?
Because we have access to lots of protein and all different kinds of micronutrients, which prehistoric people often did not have when they switched to an agricultural diet. Living off of grains alone results in crippling malnutrition. Our prehistoric ancestor didn’t realize this. Hunting and gathering a variety of foods provided them with the nutrition they needed to thrive, but many of those foods couldn’t be stored for long lengths of time, and used during natural shortages. Grains could be stored for months (as long as kitties could defend the granaries from rodents
), and thus provided them with a stable food source, but incomplete nutrition.
So… once people started farming they suddenly stopped eating all meat and survived solely on grain? Why would they stop hunting? I mean, it’s not like hunting suddenly became harder with the advent of farming. For that matter, hunting was often pretty hard, which is why they foraged for plant sources of nutrition in the first place. In fact, unless meat sources were really plentiful, the pre-agrarian diet was heavily plant-based because plants are easier to catch and kill.
Also, if they grew legumes then they did not have incomplete nutrition because legumes and grains make a complete protein.
I’d have to see that Smithsonian exhibit because most prehistoric humanoid and human bones that I have seen (granted in a museum setting) have been smaller than modern skeletons.
I don’t believe most societies suddenly switched to only agriculture. However, as society grew, and you had increased stratification (including an elite class that didn’t have to work, and a class that worked all the time) agriculture became the preferred method of obtaining food. Regarding legumes, I don’t think those were introduced to European people for a very long time, and I would have to guess that in most societies grains were cultivated first. What allowed most people to survive on early agricultural diets was a combination of dairy and grains, or grains supplemented with meat and fish.
If you rely on grains for the majority of your calories, you won’t have time to do much hunting and gathering. People in hunting and gathering societies work, on average, 20 hours per week. Agriculture is much more labor intensive, but it was preferred in some societies because it allowed humans more control over their food source.
And yes, for certain communities (not the ancient Britons or Inuit), the pre-agrarian diet was heavily plant-based. Some communities would have eaten 10 or more servings of vegetables per day, and tons of fruit when it was available.
I can’t find the Smithsonian exhibit that I looked at, but I did find this on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution#Social_change
And here’s an article about the pros and cons of agriculture, as well as the controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution#Social_change
1. “I don’t believe,” “I don’t know,” “I would have to guess,” all mean that you don’t really know for sure.
2. Where do you get your information that people in hunter/gatherer societies work an average of 20 hours per week. And what, exactly, does that work involve?
3. You only cite the ancient Britons and Inuits as examples of pre-agrarian diets that were not heavily plant based. And then you go on to say that some communities ate several helpings of fruits and vegetables per day, yet you insist that when people first started farming that it was grains and grains only (or majority grains) even though PRE-farming they ate a variety for fruits and vegetables… all of which had seeds that could have been cultivated.
4. Wikipedia is a notoriously unreliable reference because it is based entirely on user contributions, some of which are not well researched and heavily biased.
Jill, I will start a completely new comment to respond to your last post, since everything is getting squashed and cut off now.
Echoing Tiffany’s comments here wrt an ancestral (not necessarily “paleo” (TM). At its best, this approach is very congruent with a HAES perspective. But when money is to be made, sometimes it’s not always at its best.
That said, the life expectancy argument isn’t the strongest against a paleo/ancestral approach. That is based on an average, which very much reflects the difficulty of life in the paleolithic eg disease, famine, etc.
Tangent, but I read a theory in “Sex At Dawn” that a lot of that low life expectancy was due to deliberately abandoning newborns as an attempt at family planning.
I get tempted by “paleo” when they talk about eating whole foods instead of white flour/white sugar, but then it does seem to go off on some wild theories/promises. (For instance, I now read on a page about the Paleo Diet that, along with osteoporosis, diabetes, etc., our ancestors did not suffer from *nearsightedness*. Amazing! Perhaps if I just stop eating white sugar… um, no.)
the nearsighted people didnt survive to adulthood, they got eaten by animals they didnt see coming, or fell into rivers or off cliffs they didnt see properly. And most didnt live long enough to get osteoporosis or type 2 diabetes – the ones who got type 1 died very quickly with it.
Right – it has nothing to do with their diet, and going “paleo” won’t change my eyesight!
(It might also have something to do with the relatively small amount of time that ancient hunter-gatherers spent sitting at computers.)
Also, how exactly could they know whether or not people were nearsighted? I also want to add that being nearsighted alone does not necessarily reduce one’s life expectancy.
I am nearsighted and I haven’t worn glasses in over a year because I haven’t been able to afford the ones that broke. I have not walked (or driven) off a cliff or suffered any other sort of mayhem. However, I am also not as nearsighted as some — which is why I can get by without having glasses for over a year.
“Nearsighted” is not synonymous with blind. There ARE varying degrees.
>> Also, how exactly could they know whether or not people were nearsighted?
Good question! Lack of spectacles in ancient tombs; no evidence of large-print cave paintings?
The ancestral approach sounds just as junky as every other diet fat. I mean, even when you rule out things like people who are adopted and don’t know their ancestry, or people with multi-ethnic backgrounds, and just go with people who are 100% Pure whatever, it doesn’t hold up and here’s why:
Migration, Invasion, Colonization, and Wars.
People traveled from one land to another and took their foods, and plants with them. And those foods became part of the newly settled region. People who were captured and sold as spoils of war brought their foods, spices and customs with them. And this has been going on since time immemorial.
And while you can say that, for instance, rice is a main staple of many asian diets, you can’t really say what a true ancestral diet for any region or population is because intermixing of BOTH people and food customs has gone on so long that very few people are truly 100% anything.
Look, if eating certain foods makes you feel good, great! But there really is no best or optimal way for EVERYONE to eat.
One of very few useful things in that rules-for-eating book that was the thing a few years back–you know, rules 3-66, be well off, work moderate hours without a lot of off-work obligations that take you out of the kitchen, and live near a greenmarket–was the rule, “Pick an ethnic diet and stick to it.” The writer explains that communities in which people tend to have a long, healthy (by which he also means thin unfortunately) old age tend to also have a conservative cuisine. So, he says, pick a peasant diet–Japanese, Himalayan, Greek Islander, whatever–and eat that way consistently. If, of course, you are able to get the ingredients.
*Nepali.
No thanks. I’d rather have a short life with a wide variety of foods from a variety of ethnicities, than practice dietary Apartheid. How terribly, terribly, boring.
It does obviate the constant “OMG! Soy is the magic medicine of eternal life!–No! It’s olive oil! OMG! OMG! It’s yak butter!” faddishness. It’s the whole package that counts. If it isn’t feasible to eat like that whole hog, then there’s no point trying to find the one magic thing in the food culture so you can sprinkle it on your cereal, so to speak.
Hello all from here in the UK, hope you all had a good Christmas and that you’re not getting too stressed/agitated by the inevitable talk/lectures about dieting, directly after we’ve(in UK anyway)been encouraged to “stuff ourselves stupid” with food in the lead in to the holidays! I’ve even noticed that one of our companies here(Argos) that recently started selling online, has for days before Christmas, already begun to flog exercise machines. It was interesting listening to their sales spiel, which as well as saying how great it would be to exercise at home on these machines, there was the added, “think of the weight you could lose/tone up” that went on and on, at same time as other places are telling us to eat til we can’t move! There again maybe that’s only for “thin/skinny” people?
I was also concerend at receiving an update from the usually very good, Arthritis Care organisation I’m in recently and as well as telling us about their helplines etc., there was a piece on why their helplines needed our support. They listed 5 main reasons why people with arthritis contacted their phone lines and no. 4 on this was, “The need for our helpline is increasing: with an ageing and more OVERWEIGHT population, the incidence of arthrits is growing, hence more people are contacting us for help”.
I will be contacting them directly to ask what they are basing this on and what proof they have, such a sweeping statement/generalisation? If they are blaming arthritis mainly on weight gain, how do you explain thinner or more “normal/average” sized people getting arthritis and how can your weight be a factor, when it’s in your back, neck, elbows etc., etc?
Regards, Marion (UK)
Hi Marion, I am in UK to, South Manchester. I agree that is bad from AC, one group who get arthritis is athletes! My old PE teacher who played hockey seriously, has severe arthritis now, as did my dad who used to cycle very long distances – Liverpool to Anglesey in a day for example.
A group that suffers from similar symptoms to arthritis, i.e., osteoporosis, is thin people and those with very slight frames, particularly anorexics.
I hate the Paleo diet along with all those “Grains (especially wheat) are evil because they make us fat” bullshit diets.
Besides, if people REALLY wanted to eat like our early ancesters, they’d empty their refrigerators and pantries, and wander the streets in search of food. They would also fish from local bodies of water, and hunt local wildlife with rudimentary weapons. And if they didn’t find any food that day, or if a bigger human decided to steal their “lunch money,” they wouldn’t eat.
Hell, the homeless and freegans who dumpster dive are living closer to the paleo “ideal.”
The only good thing to come of the grains (especially wheat) = evil gluten-free craze is that people who are ACTUALLY sensitive to gluten (which is only a small percentage of the population) now have more gluten-free options thanks to all these companies scrambling for a piece of the “glutendeathfatz” pie — gluten-free of course.
There was a time where gluten-free in a restaurant meant a salad with no dressing. Nowadays someone with coeliac can actually get a decent meal.
I have coeliac, and it is much easier to get GF food, although mostly I prepare from basic ingredients. It has made me see how much rubbish is in a lot of pre-prepared food, including the supposedly healthy stuff. and dont get me started on Innocent Smoothies!
Actually, it is believed that gluten sensitivity is much higher than originally realized. Some people have full blown Celiacs disease and others have a sensitivity. More and more they’re noticing a correlation between auto-immune disease, gluten and grains. I gave up gluten and grains and it has been amazing how much that has impacted my thyroid disease. I’m not alone. Read auto-immune disease forums and you’ll find all kinds of people saying the same thing.
I recently read an article about how they’ve noticed a connection between gluten and some mental disorders. Gluten sensitivity can manifest in different ways. It doesn’t affect people the same.
Did I say it didn’t exist? No. I said it was a small percentage of the population. Even if it is higher than originally realized, it’s still a small percentage of the population. And I am well aware of the claims regarding autoimmune disease and gluten as I have autoimmune thyroid disease myself. If people feel better off gluten, great, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that there ARE people jumping on the gluten-free bandwagon for weight reasons.
Exactly. I’ve tried high-protein, low/no-grain diets, and it made me so sick and depressed I didn’t want to get out of bed in the mornings. I get that there are a lot of people who need to avoid gluten for health reasons — but there are probably just as many people who thrive on and do best with a high-grains, high-produce diet (has anyone ever stopped to question, if agriculture was so bad for ALL human beings, why we kept at it?)
Exactly, Mama Wrench. This site really needs a like button. One of the issues I have with Paleo is that it feeds into the idea that people, humans, don’t know how to feed themselves. That agriculture, specifically grains, are such a blight on humanity and yet, for CENTURIES we continued to eat them. Not because they provided some benefit, but because given the chance we will eat BAD FOODS us because we are too stupid to know better.
And now all we need is for someone to step in and show us the way back to our caveman ancestors. To show us how to eat again…
Malarkey.
I have autoimmune thyroid disease and every time I get on some damned support group to discuss how to deal with and manage my illness, there’s some person telling me that I absolutely HAVE to go gluten free or paleo. That it’s the ONLY WAY to treat this illness. And when I tell them, “No thanks, I want to try other things before I go removing everything I love from my diet.” they start in with the vague future health threats.
If people like the diet and feel good on it, bully for them. But I’m really sick of it being touted as THE WAY.
I “like” your comment. Hear, hear!
I’m joining the chorus putting in a nice word for some forms of paleo– the life span argument isn’t sound because early humanity had high rates of infant mortality for whatever reason, but the adults lived almost as long as we do.
The major reason paleo doesn’t fill me with horror the way low fat and low calorie diets do is that it doesn’t seem to make people miserable.
This doesn’t mean it would be good for everyone, or that the theory is completely sound (there have been genetic changes since then, and I think thorough-going paleo would include eating insects), and certainly many if not all paleo diets use not being fat as one evidence of improved health– it would take great stubbornness not to in this culture. However, they also use improved energy and not having various ailments as evidence.
I think paleo has its origin in a desire to live better rather than as pure weight-loss diets do, in a desire to look right and prove virtue through self-deprivation, and this makes a difference.
Paleo would make ME miserable, I would not want to eat meat, for one thing. It repulses me.
Fair enough. On the other hand, I have the impression that low calorie is stressful for *everyone* who tries it.
See, that’s one of the problems I have with the paleo thing. If it were TRULY paelo diet, it would not necessarily be a high-, or even adequate-, calorie diet. Because most of the people following the diet don’t have to forage and hunt for food. They go to the store and stock up the pantry and fridge and food pretty much on-demand.
Cave men didn’t have that luxury and the true paleo diet was pretty stressful because even if they stored dried and salted foods, they were limited in what they could store by how much they could get in each foraging session.
Oh, and they pretty much spent large parts of every day trying to get food. That’s pretty stressful too.
No, from what I understand, people in hunter/gatherer societies work about 20 hours per week.
Where are you getting your information?
Jill, I’ve gotten my information from anthropology courses and books. I almost chose anthropology as my undergrad major, but settled on physics instead.
That’s true anthropologically. If we’re going to pay attention to the science, though, we should look at all of it. They have found grains at Paleolithic sites. The claim that all people before agriculture were thin is the most bogus thing I have ever heard. Look up the date on the Venus of Willendorf and then we’ll talk. Most of the Paleo authors and gurus I have seen cherry pick their scientific understandings as much as a evangelical Christians seem to do with the Bible. It doesn’t help that most of the population is uninformed about this topic, and the people who are not in favor of the diet make arguments based on flawed cultural understandings – such as the life expectancy, “rough life” etc. The Paleo diet is restrictive and damaging. It can seriously mess up your thyroid. It doesn’t matter if the general population doesn’t understand much about hunter-gatherers – the fact is, the quacky diet gurus are also lying to you and trying to sell books, programs. etc.
Could you go into some more detail about the risks from paleo?
I didn’t say anything about the hunter/gatherer diet and weight. But regarding your assertion that that type of diet is damaging, even today there are still hunter/gatherer societies, and the people do not suffer from malnutrition. It is completely possible to get all of the micro-, macro-, and non-nutrients one needs without eating grains or legumes.
Thanks for this!! It drives me nuts about how these “virtuous” diet foods are so massively processed, so obviously a weird combo of living on soda/chips and starving at the same time.
The really scary one is HCG. It was my last diet before I found HAES. I found that so many people are on it, but keep it a bit secret. I kept it kinda secret as you only eat 500 calories a day and inject yourself with pregnancy hormone. It worked a year, then all the weight came back which is fine now thanks to HAES, but now my metabolism/energy level is a mess
Just so grateful for HAES and FA now.
I am all for eating whole, simple, unprocessed foods. It makes me insane when people are doing “paleo” or gluten free diets that include highly processed fake foods that somehow follow the “rules” of these diets. I have seen “paleo” bread (which, since grains are forbidden, what in heaven’s name is it made of?) and “paleo” cookie dough. Really? Did cave men eat cookies? I don’t think so. As for all the gluten free stuff, I have a good friend who jumped on the GF bandwagon for quite a while but she started realizing that the highly processed GF breads and pastries and stuff were making her way sicker than just eating plain old wheat in the first place. Whatever they were putting there in place of the gluten was something she was actually sensitive to and she’s actually felt better since she just resumed eating wheat. As far as I am concerned, simplicity is the best policy when it comes to eating.
As with most things, it’s worth looking at paleo at its worst, best, and average. I haven’t seen paleo sites pushing highly artificial pseudo-bread, and some are now saying that some grains are safe, and and likewise for tubers. I think of Chris Kresser (http://chriskresser.com/) as at least not obviously wrong, willing to do research, and taking feedback from commenters.
I believe in people paying attention to how what they eat makes them feel– you can get some valuable information by looking at the effects a few hours or a day after a meal. The longest interval I’ve heard of is 3-4 days for migraines from allergies.
I would agree that it might be good to examine how you react to different foods. I figured out that chicken made me sick in my twenties. Before then, I didn’t understand why I was getting sick three or more times a week when I went to college; my mother cooks a lot of beef and fish, not much chicken. I was at a family style restaurant and get sick. My boyfriend’s mother insisted I had food poisoning from uncooked chicken. It clicked that I wasn’t getting food poisoning from badly cooked chicken more than once a week. I was getting sick from chicken no matter how it was cooked. It doesn’t matter the interval when it’s a frequently consumed food and uncommon allergen.
It wouldn’t surprise me too much if chicken isn’t good for your mother, and that’s why she wasn’t cooking it.
One of my friends suggests looking at what your forebearers ate– not the worst idea, but problematic for those whose forebearers are from a number of different regions and/or ethnicities.
“One of my friends suggests looking at what your forebearers ate– not the worst idea, but problematic for those whose forebearers are from a number of different regions and/or ethnicities.”
It’s also problematic for those of us who are adopted and don’t actually know who our biological ancestors are (I’m assuming that this advice is based on the assumption that “forebearers”=ancestors you are biologically descended from/related to).
Good point– anyone with closed adoption in their ancestry (in other words, not just people who’ve been closed-adopted, but also their children) are missing a chunk of information about their ancestry.
It’s also problematic because almost no one has 100% pure ancestry. I mean, the Romans and the Vikings alone stomped across most of Europe and Asia. And they weren’t the only ones.
I follow a mostly paleo diet and we buy very little processed or packaged food. In fact, almost everyone I know who does paleo, does it from a whole foods approach. In my case, I HAVE to as I have auto-immune disease. I cannot have gluten, or soy and have started realizing how grains affect my body. I’m not saying they’re bad for everyone. But those of us with auto-immune disease tend to avoid grains because we do notice a difference.
I spent a decade trying to get my disease under control with meds and it wasn’t until I started looking at food that I was able to control the symptoms. And I’m not the only one. That has to mean something!
We eat meat, fresh veggies, fruit and I bake from scratch using nut or seed flours. I understand some people just simply do not like meat. But I’m not sure why paleo is on this list because I’ve not seen anything in stores that actually caters to the paleo crowd.
There are companies who cater to the gluten-free crowd and while I don’t buy most of it (because a lot of it also has soy and soy is terrible on thyroid disease) I know a lot of families with young kids with celiacs who are so grateful to have so many options. And most of those companies have quality products with good ingredients!!
Paleo is on the list because there are plenty of people (and organizations) coopting paleo as a weight loss diet. Even if there aren’t specifically Paleo Diet Foods (which there are) people are still selling the idea of the diet as a weight loss solution. It’s even in the way people talk up the diet such as “Modern food is making us fat” (as Ragen mentioned in her updated post).
If you don’t believe me, check out Pro-Paleo movies like “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.”
That movie is certainly not pro-paleo! It’s pro-vegetarian or pro-vegan (haven’t seen it, but have read plenty about it and had my doctor shill it as part of her “plant based diet” approach).
Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead isn’t a Paleo-friendly movie. It’s a movie about a juice fast.
YOu are absolutely right. I got my ridiculous fad diet movie titles mixed up. I meant the one that was in response to “Supersize Me.” The name escapes me.
The movie you’re talking about is “Fathead.” I think the weight focus in this film is largely in response to supersize me, which was all about blaming the fast food industry for our fatness. A major goal of this film was to refute that assertion by picking apart supersize me. Which was fun to watch, as that movie kind of activated my eyeroll reflex.
For me gluten free is a godsend. When I eat gluten I get sick for a week. I probably don’t have classic celiac. But I am off the charts reactive to gliadin, a gluten protein arising from GMO wheat at has dominated since the 90s with GMO wheat everywhere. This is probably one of bt reasons so ny more people are so sensitive to wheat and gluten now. It used to be a small population but now it is much larger and researchers are finding there is classic celiac group and now a another group of symptoms that don’t include classic celiac symptoms like weight loss etc.
There is a lot of overpriced, crap processed food with heap and dangerous soy, safflower, canola oil trans fats being sold as GF health food, I agree.
Also, I find a version of Paleo that includes whole food carbs to be the most functional way for me to eat and be healthy. It doesn’t cause weight loss, and I hate it when paleo sites use weight loss as a feature/motivator. The whole point is that this is the way I feel and function best. Also, logically: industrialized food has only been around for 50-100 years, our bodies are simply not designed for it. This is why Paleo is a little different from the others on the list.
Also, Ragen, the Paleo diet has a lot of cross over with Weston A Price, who studied tradial non industrialized diets back in the 1920s. He found that people eating those diets had massively better health than westerners and lived into their 90s if not felled by an accident etc. Also: same was found with more recent studies of Kitavan people. Higher carbs than trendy Paleo for weight loss diets, but no grains etc and they live long healthy lives unless they fall out of a tree or have some other accident.
I am going to echo that life expectancy wasn’t correlated to diet, so the “paleo” remark turns me off. I’m not a paleo eater, but I know many who are and most are not on it to lose weight…..no one is anyway. It’s an issue that some people (and I’m one of them) can’t tolerate grains or starchy food and some people (thank Gods I’m not one of them but I cant’ tolerate pasteurized dairy) can’t tolerate dairy, making a whole food “paleo diet” healthier for them. I jokingly call my own grain-free (I’m allergic to all grains) but otherwise dairy rich Weston A. Price Foundation based food lifestyle a “herder’s diet.” I don’t believe in restricting food for weigh loss but I do believe in eating a whole and natural diet AND restricting foods that actively make me sick. Therefore I hate that paleo and WAPF style eating is often sold in terms of weight loss rather than the real focus that it should have ….finding the way of eating that makes you feel vital and healthy.
Um…this was supposed to be about how these diets don’t work for WEIGHT LOSS. I don’t know that this is a forum for defending the general benefits of Paleo (and for the record, I have some doubts about the ability of modern people in the West to authentically replicate a prehistoric lifestyle completely enough for them to expect similar health to that of prehistoric people).
And for the record, all the references to Paleo I’ve seen have been weight loss-related. I appreciate that that’s not all Paleo is, but just like veganism and real food, it’s often used that way.
Ah – looks like Ragen has added an edit to clarify that part. (Another reason I love this blog!)
I wish this blog had a like button.
I think people have felt compelled to defend Paleolithic diets because it stings to see them placed in the same category as crash diets. There are many, many, many people with difficult diseases who have tried eating closer to the way our ancestors would have eaten, and have seen massive improvement in their symptoms. I do recognize that the research hasn’t caught up (as my doctor said, there’s no major money to be made by showing that a paleolithic diet helps with autoimmune diseases, and therefore acquiring funding for major research is difficult).
So, an acquaintance posted the following on my wall, presumably in response to this article (she didn’t actually reply to my post). What do I say to her?
“Have you researched these diet falsehoods that you have posted? I am in the best health I have been in for years using Medifast. Falsehood #1- Five shakes a day. No, I have beef stew, sloppy joe, macaroni and cheese, scrambles eggs, all kinds of soup, bars of all flavors, oatmeal, pudding, cereals, snacks, and shakes. Falsehood #2 starvation level caloric intake. I eat over 500 calories a day in Medifast meals plus a lean and green, which puts my caloric intake around 1000 of usable healthy food, NO JUNK. If it was starvation level I would not have the energy level that I have regained from my youth. Falsehood #3 Health coaches with no training. There are several test that a health coach needs to pass and there is more training in Maryland for coaches. Yes, they get compensated for their services, but I don’t know anyone that will work for free. Who better than someone that has gone through what you are going through, to lead you? Yes, the program sells itself. When people see you healthy they want to know how you did it. There is a very extensive book and workbook to read and write out what you are going through. It teaches you what to watch out for and how to avoid those foods. It also teaches you how to eat once you reach your goal weight. I have heard that there are a few people that have problems with it because they did not watch their medications when starting and didn’t start with the OK of their doctor. I have taken offense by your post. Please research you post before making them public.
… I posted to quickly. Starvation Caloric intake is when you take in so few calories that there is no energy for your body to do what it needs to do. In dieting it is burning fat, to create energy, so your body can exercise and preform the jobs you have to do daily.”
Ragen, have you seen this link? Apparently there was a lawsuit against Medifast. http://www.sequenceinc.com/fraudfiles/2011/01/the-truth-comes-out-in-the-medifast-litigation/
When I did Medifast I was allotted 5 shakes a day and that’s it. I talked to my doctor before starting and I wasn’t on any medications at the time I started. Several months later, I’d lost very little weight and I’d started showing signs of what would turn out to be a severe autoimmune disorder, despite following the diet perfectly.
I know of several people who did these types of diets who were worse off afterwards than before they started. And of course, gained more back than they initially lost.
It is sad that doctors will allow patients to try these programs, let alone even suggest these types of programs.
Perhaps you could respond by saying something along the lines of:
Thank you but I find that eating in a way that’s wholesome and healthy is in my best interests. I can manage my eating choices without the need to resort to substituting chemically processed foods in place of foods that will provide my body with the necessary nutrients it needs, the pleasure of enjoying a meal with family, friends or myself along with the flexibility to try a a new recipe or type of cuisine when I so choose. While I understand your opinion might differ from my research, I would request that if you have any additional issues with my postings that I place on my wall, you contact me privately. Lastly, I really prefer my wall not to become an advertising medium for a product I do not believe in.
Or something along those lines. I have found that logic and reason are harder for others to argue with than reacting personally. Granted that’s not always the case since people will try to argue but if you don’t react in a strong way (in other words, don’t let them get your goat) they may back off. If she doesn’t and gets nasty because she can’t win against logic then using Facebook’s ability to limit who can see your wall posts would be a good idea (I love that feature…LOL).
Also, those touting weight loss programs like medifast, herbalife (the ones that you have to buy into/multi-tier, etc.) will do their best to advertise by taking over wall space, blogs, etc. using their hype of how their program is good for you, it offers this, losing weight is great, they feel great, come join us, it’s a big party, I’m so full of shit and I just want your money, etc. It’s all part of the marketing ploy. I’ve seen it many, many places online where they hijack someone’s Facebook wall or blog, etc. to spout their nonsense. In your case it looks like she’s trying to advertise her hokey, BS program by way of lambasting what you wrote and attempting to sell her product via your presumed ignorance…*sigh*. They teach some really nasty marketing tactics for lots of these types of programs.
Anyway, just some evening rambling. Hope you can manage to figure out what to do with her post (delete/block?) LOL
I think I would say the following:
First of all, you can eat whatever you want, I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do. My response to her “falsehoods”
#1: The three “health coaches” who I talked to all suggested that the best way to lose weight was to stick to the shakes – first ingredient “soy protein isolate”. Even if you aren’t eating the shakes, in looking at ingredients reconstituted soy protein is still heavy on the list. For example, soy protein isolate is the first ingredient in potato puffs, potatoes are not an ingredient at all. First ingredient in the brownies is soy protein isolate. Chicken and rice soup – second ingredient is soy protein isolate. The sloppy joes (which are vegetarian and served in a mug with no buns) have Textured soy protein.as their first ingredient.
#2 Regardless of how someone says they feel on a 1,000 calorie diet, it’s still 560 calories less than what was used to test the effects of starvation in the Minnesota Starvation studies which found that “prolonged semi-starvation produces significant increases in depression, hysteria and hypochondriasis” While some people can feel energetic for a time while in the ketosis that is induced by this diet, many do not.
#3 You become a health coach the minute you sign up. Then you have 30 days to take what they themselves call a “basic competency test” The study guide to which only discusses how to do the program (with massive trigger warnings you can find it here http://www.medifastmedia.com/tsfl/docs/quick_start_guide.pdf)
Again, a diet this low in fat can lead to women stopping menstruation and losing their hair. It is a ketosis based diet with all of the dangers that entails including kidney issues, and they have no statistically significant studies that support this either for weight loss or health.
~Ragen
~Ragen
Could I just point out that the Minnesota starvation study was done on men, though, who need more calories. The men ate around 1500 instead of around 2500, so eating 1000 instead of 2000 as a woman isn’t that different. Regardless of whether this is a starvation level of calories or not (which it probably is for a lot of people but may very well not be for a very small woman), comparing a woman’s caloric intake to a man’s in the way youve done here is disingenuous. And saying that a certain level of calories (within reason) is definitely starvation for everyone seems too generalised to me. A very very small, inactive person may be completely fine on that amount, or at least have it as a reasonable weight loss amount.
Hi Michelle,
The idea that all men need more calories than all women is, in itself, a faulty generalization; (and, of course, men and women are both encouraged to go on the Medifast diet.) There is no way to calculate a level of calories that is considered starvation for everyone so I am speaking in generalities here. Using your numbers, the men ate 60% of the recommended calories. At 1,000 calories, the woman to whom I was referring was eating 50% of the recommended calories – 10% less than those in the study on a percentage basis.
I do not think that there are any studies that support this as a way to lose weight long term or become healthier, let alone as a “reasonable weight loss amount” of calories, especially considering concerns of loss of menstruation, kidney issues, hair loss etc.
~Ragen
________________________________
Good info…
#1 – Soy protein isolate…that just sounds like I’m eating the contents of a petri dish.
A metabolic specialist and certified nutritionist also told me to drink just the shakes and it was called Medifast 800 at the time, so that was my caloric intake at max, 800 calories. Since I was supposed to drink the shakes (the size of a child’s juice box) every three hours, this would have interrupted sleep, so I was allowed to double up twice a day. However, I was so dizzy and passing out that I rarely remembered to double up. Meanwhile, I visited the specialist (as in a license to practice medicine in a specialized field) twice weekly and begged her to check to see if I was anemic because I was passing out and my gums, inner eyelids and skin was pure white. She said I was naturally fair and when I collapsed on the exam room floor, they did labs and I need six units transfused that day. I hope whoever is suing Medifast puts them out of business. FTR, the purpose of me being on Medifast was in anticipation of meeting the surgical date for WLS, which I decided against while in the hospital for malnutrition.
That you should have to be so sick you pass out because your “specialist” won’t believe what you’re telling her about how you feel? How stupidly ignorant yet so prevalent.
I don’t know what you’d say to her specifically, but 1000 calories is still starvation level. If she has more energy, that’s awesome, but it makes me wonder how she was eating before that 1000 calories is an improvement.
From the U.N. hunger portal website:
“The average minimum energy requirement per person is about 1800 kcal per day. The exact requirement is determined by a person’s age, body size, activity level and physiological conditions such as illness, infection, pregnancy and lactation.”
http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/
(It’s always a reality-check for me at these times to read about world hunger issues and malnutrition… what crash diets are doing is advocating malnutrition.)
Spell checker!
Thank you so much for writing this, Ragen. At one point I went to Jenny Craig and asked them to assign me to a “coach” who had once been fat, because I thought that would be best for me. The receptionist said, “Sure, I’ll put you with Mindy. I think she used to weigh like one-fifty. (At the time I am sure that I weighed at least 100 pounds more than that.)
That’s funny…when I did Jenny Craig, I finished up at 150 lbs(5 lbs from my goal weight) and I was pretty happy with it. Little did I know I was still fat!
PS: I only stopped because I plateaued(for the 3rd time)while on 1000 calories/day. I just wasn’t up to dropping to 800 calories for 5 lousy pounds. I personally don’t know how anyone could live long term on 1000 calories. Not starvation-level my ass!
Ooh, like, 150! That’s so, like, FAT!
Unfortunately I thought so when I weighed 150. So I started dieting. I now weigh a lot more than that. Thanks, dieting.
:/
In fact plunge in our life expectancies to about 30 years is thought to have happened when we moved from nomadic to agrarian lifestyles.
And that was not because we are not optimized to eat grains, we are. In fact we were roasting and eating wild grains all through the paleolithic era and the negative impacts on our life spans as we shifted to an agrarian existence were largely the result of higher density settlements that resulted in hierarchical inequalities in food availability coupled with the dawning of the Golden Age of the Pathogen — thanks to our proximity to each other in these new agrarian settlements, we could share deadly viral and bacterial infections to produce cyclical waves of deadly epidemics.
Nomadic life allowed for a life expectancy of 70-80 years because we were spread out and lacking in extreme hierarchical inequalities and it took us to the second half of the last century to get back to our expected biological life spans.
“Together these data suggest that societal evolution has worked out differently for the quality of human life, first negatively, in the change from a hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture, and next positively, in the more recent transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society. We live now longer and happier than ever before.” [R Veerhoven, 2010]
And while I can see several anecdotal testimonies here in the comment thread, there is no clinical evidence that adopting any restrictive diet, in the absence of a pre-existing condition, has any preventative value whatsoever. The tolerance of grains is greatly misunderstood.
There is only one scientifically identifiable intolerance to grains and it’s called celiac disease, technically gluten sensitive enteropathy. And interestingly, the genotype likely allowed for the inhibition of helminth infection (worms) when humans were still eating roasted wild grains.
Consumption of large amounts of grain does not trigger celiac disease. However, gastrointestinal illness and possibly the use of broad spectrum antibiotics can activate the condition in those with the genetic pre-disposition to develop it.
The use of IgG testing to identify gluten (or any food) intolerance is completely unreliable because there is evidence that this particular immunoglobulin is released to modulate any response from the immune system and not to heighten a response. Screening for IgG is what naturopaths offer as a service. See an immunologist or allergist if you want to determine your actual food intolerances in a scientifically dependable way.
Food allergies involve the response of IgE (immunoglobulin E) and the symptoms are usually near-immediate and involve wheezing, difficulty breathing, itching, swelling, hives and sometimes anaphylactic shock. These are dangerous responses and require complete avoidance of the food in question.
Food intolerances are not immune-system mediated — meaning the immune system is not involved. A common food intolerance among some populations is lactose intolerance: the body no longer produces lactase to break down the lactose. Symptoms are not life-threatening of even physically damaging but do involve pain, bloating, diarrhea etc. etc.
Secondary lactose intolerance is common for many with other chronic illnesses. That means that they can produce lactase to digest lactose but their bodies are unable to do so due to the other unrelated illness they are dealing with (hence: secondary not primary intolerance). Many folks with eating disorders develop secondary lactose intolerance while dieting and it resolves when they pursue recovery.
Although celiac disease is called a gluten intolerance, the immune system is involved but the responder is IgA and not IgE — that’s why it is not the same as a wheat allergy (IgE-mediated). Symptoms for celiac disease are complex and diffuse. Unidentified celiac disease will lead to impaired quality of life and higher risk of early death.
And that brings me back to the questionable value of following any diet that restricts groups of foods. Unless you have another pre-existing disease or medical condition, then there is absolutely no evidence that restricting food groups will prevent the onset of illness down the line. In fact, we have good clinical evidence that restricting food or food groups will lower your life expectancy.
I have celiac disease. If it had never been activated, then let’s argue my life expectancy was the average for my country of about 82 years. Once activated, if the condition had remained undiagnosed, then my life expectancy plummeted to about 60-65. Once diagnosed, my adherence to a gluten-free diet moves my life expectancy back to mid-70s. Do you see the point? My life expectancy is relatively improved by adhering to a gluten-free diet but does not match a life expectancy of a non-celiac diseased individual who manages to avoid removing any important food groups from her diet.
If anyone wants all the scientific references for the above you’ll have to visit my site and blog posts.
Paleo diet should be included in the list with all the other commercial diet offerings because whether you wrap these things up as blatant weight loss scams or put the big bow on them of “healthy lifestyle”, ultimately the same outcomes are inevitable for otherwise healthy individuals: impaired quality of life and reduced life expectancy.
Thanks for the post Ragen and sorry my response is a freakin’ novel.
All of this pales talk assumes, though, that because we did something in the past, we’re optimised for it now. This is just pseudo-scientific evolutionary biology, which is a pretty suspect area of though, and responsible for such silliness as that women probably like handbags because they could use them for collecting berries. Just because something seems to make a bit of sense and uses the word evolution, doesn’t mean it’s true (it might be, but speculation doesn’t prove it).
I may have to steal the “women like handbags because they could use them for collecting berries” — too clever!
Not everyone is going to have access to a clinical or medical test to diagnose a food intolerance or sensitivity. That does not mean that one does not exist. If my sister was born 500 years ago and developed the coconut allergy that she has, she would still need to avoid coconut, even though she wouldn’t have been formally diagnosed. There are some people with gluten sensitivity who do not have celiac disease. They complain of symptoms (including bowel problems and fatigue), and tests for celiac disease are negative (including IgA and endoscopy), but when a double-blind placebo controlled test is performed, the gluten group fares far worse than the placebo group. The conclusion is that “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” exists, but they don’t know what causes it.
It’s possible that improvement in symptoms after changing to a different diet could be psychological. But the general advice I’ve received from doctors (including an allergist) is that if a food bothers me, I shouldn’t eat it. Don’t assume an improvement (in yourself or others) is psychological. When my sister said that she thought coconut and palm oils were causing her diarrhea, I thought she was imagining it, and that she actually had something generic like IBS. Then she had actual allergy tests performed, and it turned out that she WAS allergic to both palm and coconut. I felt like an ass. And I should have felt like an ass BEFORE she was formally diagnosed. People know their own bodies better than anyone else.
Studies about non-celiac gluten sensitivity:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22825366
Good points. Also, there’s an extent to which it doesn’t matter if it’s psychological or not. If you’re having diarrhea, you make dietary changes, and you stop having diarrhea, then you feel better, regardless of whether the food itself was causing the diarrhea directly or whether some subconscious placebo effect fixed it.
A little tangent by way of example—I get acupuncture for back pain. My understanding is that there’s no scientific evidence that it does anything more than a placebo effect (although my acupuncturist uses heat and stim which are used in PT too). But, I go get poked with needles and I feel better. Is it a placebo effect? Pressure points? Is it mostly the heat and stim and the relaxation? Chi energy? Magic pixies? I’ve come to the conclusion that if it helps, it doesn’t really matter why. And, likewise, if it helps *me,* that matters more than a study showing it’s generally not useful.
So, I totally agree with your doctors. If you think something’s making you feel bad, avoiding it is a good idea. (Figuring out how bad and deciding if it’s worth it is also reasonable. Spicy foods don’t always agree with me, but sometimes Indian or Thai food is worth it.)
Many great points! Yes, even if an improvement is psychologically-based, it’s still an improvement. But regarding acupuncture not working any better than a placebo, I’m not sure how you would test that; what placebo would you use in place of the needles?
And I agree that for the most part, there’s no (permanent) harm in sometimes eating foods that make you feel yucky (but people with true, IgG mediated food allergies are often instructed to avoid ingesting the allergen, because repeated exposure may cause the reactions to become more severe). When I decide if a food that bothers me is worth it, the medications that are available to help with bothersome symptoms definitely contribute to my decision-making process. Cheese gives me headaches, but I will still eat some Drunken Goat Cheese on special occasions, and then take a cocktail of pseudoephedrine, tylenol, and aspirin!
….that’s supposed to say, IgE, not IgG!
Medifast put me in the hospital in record time all while under the strict supervision of a metabolic specialist and nutritionist who were high-fiving each other at my hospital bed. I was 350 lbs. and in for severe malnutrition. My hair had fallen out, I’d stopped menstruating (no, Ragen’s mention isn’t about me) and I’d STOPPED PRODUCING BLOOD and needed six units transfused in the ER. So erm…would not recommend.
Oh. My. Word. You poor person! I hope you’ve fully recovered from that!!!! You received such awful treatment from the “medical” community.
That’s truly horrible!!six units!!?? what was your hemoglobin?? And, those two morons were Hi-fivin’??Shame shame on them…
No clue about my hemoglobin because I was losing consciousness. Earlier that day I’d visited the metabolic specialist and I had been complaining for some time that I was very pale, my gums were white, my eyelids were white, I don’t think this is normal and she didn’t really closely look AT me and just dismissed it and said, Well, you’re naturally pale but look at how much weight you’re losing! And I said….I feel like fainting all the time and she said…oh OKAY, go to the lab today. An hour later, my husband having dropped me off to go to work at least in the afternoon, I’m home alone, lightheaded, pale, no energy at all and the phone rings. It’s the resident at the hospital the lab is affiliated with. He tells me I must come to the ER now. I ask why. He asks me if I’m ‘X’ and did I have blood drawn an hour ago. I said yes. He said that I was so anemic, my blood was pink and if I didn’t get to the ER for a tranfusion I could go into organ failure at any time. I called my neighbors and my husband screeching in fear, he turned around and came home, the neighbors came over and they brought me in. My neighbor/friend told me that she held me and sang to me and I cried and cried but I have no memory of it at all. She also told me a new resident was on duty and he assumed by need for a transfusion that I was bleeding out somewhere and wanted to do a colonoscopy and internal vag exam and they were all trying to tell him that it was because of a diet one of their doctors put me on. I was starving to death. They forbade the tests which they thought (and I agree) were invasive esp since everyone but this ONE resident knew why we were there, so they hooked me up to some A negative and admitted me immediately. The other doctor was on the other side of the hospital wondering where I was. Communication. It’s a beautiful thing.
Jill, here is my response to your last comment in our conversation above (the words were getting cut off!):
1. I’m using words like “I believe” because I learned that stuff a while ago, and am stating it without a reference. I could try to look everything up again, but that’s so much work….OK fine, I will.
2. That information about the work hours of hunter/gatherers was from an anthropology course/textbook. See Chapter 10 (“The First Farmers”), pp. 272-76, in Anthropology: An Exploration of Human Diversity by Conrad Phillip Kottak, 10th Ed.
“For example, food producers typically work harder than foragers do– and for a less adequate diet….Among foragers living in the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa, only part of the group needed to hunt and gather, maybe 20 hours a week, to provide an adequate diet for the entire group. Women gathered, and adult men hunted. Their labor supported older people and children. Early retirement from the food quest was possible, and forced child labor was unknown.”
3. All of the early farmers cultivated grains or roots first. See Chapter 10, in the book I mentioned above. Middle Eastern farmers cultivated wheat, Chinese farmers cultivated rice and millet, and American farmers cultivated corn and potatoes. I can’t find why this was so in the book, but I remember the professor saying that the reason for this was that grains or roots were (1) calorie dense, (2) easy to grow, and (3) able to be stored.
4. Wikipedia is a wonderful starting point, when one is interested in researching a topic. References are often provided (just click on the superscipts), and if someone has the time and money, they can be investigated.
Crikey. Never heard of this Medifast here in the UK, thank goodness.
Ragen- please, please, please with knobs on- can you do a series of reviews on popular diets like you’ve done with Medifast? I’d find it really interesting and some of the issues that have been thrown up such as calorific need and early agriculture which are less personal but allow for some discourse.
This brings up an interesting thought for me that is only tangentially related. I was doing a search for my doc’s name to get her address for an insurance for and the first link was for her profile at Medi-Weight Loss clinics. She’s apparently a doc there who has “particular interest in weight loss and the clinical problems related to excessive weight.” She’s the only M.D. in our area associated with the center. I’m kind of appalled and astounded. I love my doctor and everyone I meet who goes to her loves her too. She’s never counseled me about my weight or anything like that. So I’m sort of torn. Is it inevitable that she will mention it to me one day?
Ragen,
Have you ever looked closely at Sensa? It looks like complete BS to me, but I was wondering if it has a placebo effect or if there are any harmful ingredients in it, or if anyone has had negative side effects from using it.
Awesome.Ragen!:)