Comment by fingerprinter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fingerprinter | Hacker News Reader

When people ask me how to lose weight or get in shape, I say a couple of things that are quite controversial, though they won't be in 5-10 years as modern conventional wisdom catches up to the science.

1. 90% of what you look like is what you eat (not how much, what) rather than, say, how much you workout or your genetics.

2. Optimize what you eat before you optimize how much you eat. It is more important to eat good clean food rather than eat small portions of still bad food.

3. Exercise fast, short and incredibly intense.

#1 is something I say to catch them off guard and eliminate excuses (genetics).

#2 is the real issue. The past 25 years of diet information in the US is basically misinformation. We were told that we had to eat less fat and cholesterol and we would be healthy. Science has shown this not to be the case but we are just now catching up to that science.

For instance...this is an ideal diet for nearly everyone: 1. Eliminate grains, sugars and most fruits (high-glycemic index fruits for sure: think watermelon) 2. Load up on veggies, eggs (best protein source around) and meat (high fat meat is great...no worries) 3. No oils other than coconut or olive 4. Unless you are trying to gain weight, minimal starches (potato/sweet potato etc) 5. Some nuts...don't go crazy with them. 6. some fruit, but only of the berry/cherry variety 7. minimal diary

http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/ is a great place to start.

#3 is b/c low intensity exercise doesn't really do much for your metabolism...it is a slow calorie burn that lasts as long as you are doing the activity. High intensity workouts boost base metabolism for as long as 36 hours.

I wish I knew this when I was a teenager...feels like lost years battling diet and weight only to seek the information later and realize the errors of modern conventional wisdom. At least I know early enough to correct for my next 50+ years.

That website you link is very interesting. For starters, I can see the logic behind cutting legumes if the foundation of the guide is 'eat what prehistoric man ate' because legumes require a lot of cooking, but I'm curious if they are actually detrimental. They are usually accepted as extremely healthy.

10. Most modern fruit is just a candy bar from a tree. Go easy on bags of sugar like apples. Stick with berries.

This is a very, very interesting point. I don't know if he means this, but I realized that modern fruit is often not the same fruit from 500 years ago. It's been genetically engineered through artificial selection- apples, for example, used to be small, sour & bitter.

I've never really quite bought the demonization of grains though. We've been eating them for thousands of years, and most of the health problems blamed on grains seem to be recent events. Doesn't help that I dearly love breads.

Yeah, grains are a tough one. We have to love grains as they basically helped humans take over the world! I firmly believe that without grains we wouldn't have 6 billion people today.

That being said, I don't think eating grains is optimal for our bodies. Most of what is coming out of science today shows that we still haven't evolved to eat grains and use them very efficiently in our body. We use them, but they cause an inflammatory response and that is obviously suboptimal for overall health and nutrition. We get some nutrition out of them (nothing that we couldn't get from veggies or meat), but it also damages at the same time...catch-22.

I think of it this way: at the zoo, you see the handlers feed tigers raw meat and pandas bamboo because that is what they evolved to eat. What did we evolve to eat? Answer that question and believe you will achieve optimal health. Personally I believe what I wrote earlier is what we evolved to eat and I believe most of the science supports that.

What did we evolve to eat?

In my opinion? Whatever we can manage to digest. We are omnivores, after all.

Yes, and we are enjoying the longest lifespan ever. We didn't evolve to automatically stent our arteries, but when folks with heart disease do just that they live longer.

"Eat what we evolved to eat" is a romantically appealing argument but it is not logically sound. It's better than, "if you want your brains to grow properly, eat brains; after all, they have exactly the nutritionaly makeup you need," but it's still flawed in proving that a diet that was available to early humans was optimal for longevity.

I admit, however, that a logically flawed argument sometimes proves to give the right answer after all, but for my money (and life!) I'm going with Western science and nutrition for the most part.

"What did we evolve to eat? Answer that question and believe you will achieve optimal health."

I hate this sort of blind naturalism. We evolved to be susceptible to polio, tuberculosis, and plague and to live to ~30. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it's optimal -- science and technology can, when judiciously applied, add a lot to the quality (and length) of life.

Additionally (and importantly) evolution is only a factor up until age ~30-35 (child bearing/rearing age). Evolution plays no role in protecting us from most modern afflictions (obesity, alzheimer's, cancer, etc). You can have your "evolutinoarily optimal" paleolithic diet; I'll take my chances with modernity.

It's called a framework for making an educated decision. Perhaps I should have said 'on your way to optimal health' as one of the largest and most controllable things in our lives is what we eat.

As for 'modernism', I fail to see how knowing exactly what our body is adapted and designed to process is not useful information. Knowing this, which is the basis for knowing exactly what is optimal, you can then make a decision if that whey protein powder is good or bad for you...if creatine powder is good or bad for you...if sugar is good or bad for you...

Also, I don't think ANYONE would argue that diet is the only thing that plays into health issues. Modern medicine is fantastic and has done wonderful things for our lives, but it has failed in the past 20 or so years to provide us the optimal food paradigm.

Just an FYI, I eat this way, my family eats this way...my wife is a doctor..I have gotten PRP (platelet rich plasma) on my achilles (modern medicine...actually, pretty bleeding edge medicine) and we used modern methods for child birth (decreased mortality rate in child birth). Eating as we are intended to eat, and more importantly, knowing what we are intended to eat, in no way eschews modern medicine...please don't create a false dichotomy.

You've got a point, but you're going way overboard. Blind naturalism is a good first approximation for health advice, though it's obviously not an end point.

Men can conceive children into their 70s, so evolution does favor long life in some cases. We still have "modern afflictions" because evolution isn't perfect, and it isn't finished, and because there are tradeoffs in the biological design. For example, resistance to malaria comes with a propensity for sickle-cell disease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease)

> […] and to live to ~30.

People used to die younger because of injuries, illnesses and poor nutrition, not because the body is only "supposed" to live for 30 years.

> Additionally (and importantly) evolution is only a factor up until age ~30-35 (child bearing/rearing age). Evolution plays no role in protecting us from most modern afflictions (obesity, alzheimer's, cancer, etc).

That's absolutely not true. It seems likely that older people have played an important role in society throughout, helping take care of children while the more able work, sources of wisdom &c. While evolution hasn't eliminated all diseases of the old age (because it doesn't work actively like that) longer-lived genes have provided some survival advantage.

I'm willing to bet that 10,000 years ago you wouldn't have been able to find a homo sapien on this planet that was older than 50. The vast, vast majority of evolutionary pressure occurred well before then.

"Evolution plays no role in protecting us from most modern afflictions (obesity, alzheimer's, cancer, etc). You can have your "evolutinoarily optimal" paleolithic diet; I'll take my chances with modernity."

But there is evidence (in Taubes' GCBC to begin with) that modern foods cause the "diseases of civilization".

Before agriculture, as hunter-gatherers, many people did live into what we would consider old age (if they didn't die from injuries, etc, which is not relevant to diet).

and meat (high fat meat is great...no worries)

Wouldn't you think that seafood is more preferable than meat? It is a great source of omega 3 fatty acids and also, while cattle is usually grain-fed and/or fed some hormones, the fish would not have such an issue.

Another interesting point I came across recently is that fish may accumulate mercury in its tissues. Therefore, it is recommended to eat smaller and short-lived fish which do not have enough time to accumulate any significant amounts of mercury. Not sure about what science says, but seems logical.

Fully agree to all other points.

Yes, I would generally agree that fish aught be included and used as a primary source of protein, though with fish I feel is very important to know the source.

Also, I personally am not a huge fan of fish so I do neglect it in my diet a bit, but I make up for it with grass fed beef and bison etc (all good sources of proper ration omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids).

To the other points....I do have this for people who have already gotten control of their diet.

After you optimize what you eat, optimize what your food eats!

Baby steps ;)

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