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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

I was a world class yo-yo dieter (having lost and regained > 100 pounds four times) and I agree with you. After 50+ of years of trying many many diets I finally tried very low carb carnivore and that was the first thing that stopped the yo-yo. For 3.5 years now. I wish I had tried it earlier and life, but I was never a particular meat eater before, and an anti-meat vegetarian and vegan for years. It took extreme desperation to make me try it, and the benefits were almost immediate.

I can confirm that for this N=1, both clean vegetarian and carnivore diets are a large improvement over the standard American diet health wise, but the later has been much more sustainable.

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"both clean vegetarian and carnivore diets are a large improvement over the standard American diet health wise"

I think this is why there is so many arguments about one or other, people get fired up over veg v carnivore.

Because they are both better than the Standard American Diet.

It is really important for people to note their starting position. If they were from Standard diet, almost anything is improvement.

Just like someone can be a vegan but is eating vegan oreo's, then that is not healthy. Or carnivore and just downing ribs all day.

Seems like just less processed is the best.

Also because the hard part of a diet is entirely in the mental realm. Dieting is extremely simple to “perform” on paper but no matter what knowledge or tools you have , you’ll end up feeling hungry and have to have the fortitude to deal with that. Consistently over months and years

> Or carnivore and just downing ribs all day.

That pattern has been very successful for me. Beef short ribs are my favorite food now, and I have them for my main meal of the day (breakfast) on most days. I'm eating a plate of them as I type this. On that diet I've gone from morbidly obese to merely overweight, my diabetes is in remission, and my IBS has become manageable. The duration of the satiety from this meal is very high, so I'm not at all tempted to try to down them all day. I was a binge eater on carbs.

I wonder why you consider ribs to be carnivore junk food? Is it the fat? On any low carb program you're practically obliged to replace carbs with fat for energy. If it's the saturation of the fat, carnivores like me tend to disagree that it's unhealthy. Of course that doesn't work very well if they're covered in sugary BBQ sauce, but my breakfast has just three ingredients: ribs, salt and butter.

Guess my objection is generally the saturated fat, and the lack of fiber, and the sauces.

But you are correct. If it is just salt and butter, then ribs is a low processed food and probably not even as bad fat wise as other cuts. Probably also not the most fatty either.

Maybe a better carnivore 'junk' food example is like someone making a 'lasagna' with just layers of hamburger and a layers of cheese. So it is just all hamburger and cheese slop.

I've done both keto and vegan. And lost weight with both.

At the moment, I'm not sure I can define which one is better.

I tried so hard to relieve my IBS problems by increasing dietary fiber. That's the standard advice for bloating and constipation, and I had it bad ... to the point of suicidal thoughts. As a long time vegetarian who lived on big salads it was no problem upping my fiber. It just didn't work. It made things worse. The only relief I could find was in fasting.

When I finally tried the low residue approach of carnivore it relieved my symptoms by the next morning. As a result I've become skeptical that either fiber or carbs are health foods for me. I'm also much more skeptical of the epistemic capacity of nutrition research.

Can I suggest you look at the FODMAP "diet". Go on the elimination phase to remove the potential FODMAP triggers, then if and when it gets better after a few weeks start re-introduction to see what the triggers are. For me its Garlic, Onion, Fructans in Soda drinks and most fruit.

After sorting that out I added some psyllium fibre tablets and I'm mostly sorted.

Seems like the conversation usually boils down to just the term 'fiber'.

I agree, taking extra fiber supplements can be bad, or overwhelm the gut. But you can eat vegetables, and get fiber, but at a lower volume of fiber before you get constipated.

I'm just on side that vegetables are important. And the carnivore diet people don't seem to get enough vegetables generally, and all the other nutrients in vegetables. Even thought, you can do Keto with low carb vegetables. It can be done. Thought difficult.

Also. Gluten. When I cut out Gluten, that also cut out a ton of carbs (no breads). If you just eat vegetables without grains, it is pretty low carb.

Maybe, by the time you eat just meat, or just whole plants, or even a combination of whole foods (meat and vegetables, minus grain), your are being much more healthy in general than the Standard American Diet.

really, just eating a whole baked potato can be considered low carb compared to someone downing oreo's.

Could that be from Lectins (red beans, black beans, lentils)? https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/anti-nutrients/...

I wonder if you might have a microbiome problem, i.e. you lack the microorganisms necessary to break down certain foods such as fibres. There are now treatments which have been demonstrated to have success in restoring the missing microorganisms that lead to food intolerances, the most successful being FMT.

As I understand it the capacity of the human gut to break down insoluble fiber is quite limited, especially compared to ruminants that can turn cellulose into fatty acids in their rumen. I'm sure that a healthier gut than mine can handle insoluble fiber much better, but I'm skeptical that even healthy humans can do that by digesting a significant portion of their dietary insoluble fiber.

Humans can't really digest fiber (like ruminants), but fiber is metabolized to some degree by bacteria in the colon. Specifically the bacteria ferment fiber into butyrate which is important for immune system function and other things. If you don't get enough fiber then that is likely to cause gut microbiome problems.

https://peterattiamd.com/colleencutcliffe/

> carnivores like me tend to disagree that it’s unhealthy

Why don’t you think it’s unhealthy? Would you argue the reverse - that saturated fats are healthy?

The "lipid hypothesis" has been in retreat in mainstream medicine for years now. You can easily find lots of details, like:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18615352/

For a good popular treatments I recommend

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all...

and

https://ninateicholz.com/about/the-big-fat-surprise/

> Seems like just less processed is the best.

See how you made assumptions (not downing ribs) and watered down the analogy (oh it’s just not-SAD) in order to reach a different conclusion.

The “seems like” is a totally unrelated conclusion to the N=1 that GP was talking about.

Can you a bit more slowly highlight the signs of error you noticed in his argument please?

The main problem is not tracking calories.

I am a month in right now on tracking every calorie I eat as close as possible in a spreadsheet.

It astounds me what I thought I could eat and think I am still in a calorie deficit. I would even say I had become completely delusional from diet misinformation.

All these gimmicks to cause yourself to restrict calories is so suboptimal to simply counting.

I think counting calories is unpopular though exactly because not counting calories allows for a level of self delusional. You can then mentally be in this super position of at the same time believing to be on a diet without actually restricting calories. Of course you don't lose any weight but you are on a "diet".

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