A (not-so) Brief Update, Focusing on the Gym

Hey, so my last post talked almost exclusively about Gary Taubes' book, Good Calories, Bad Calories. I will repeat my praise of the book here, and I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in diet/health/obesity/diabetes/weight loss/what have you.

But there are other things to talk about. For example, I don't believe I uttered a single word last time about the workout situation! Things are finally (and really this time!) back to normal. Starting in about mid-January, I got a membership at the YMCA, since they waived the joining fee for the new people in January. They also have this financial assistance program for people who are poor, or underemployed, or college students (simply a combination of the previous two) so it actually costs me quite a bit less each month than my old gym membership ever did.

Plus, the facility is really nice - they have an indoor track and everything. My old gym was a snap fitness, and they didn't have a real bench or a rack or anything for weights, so I didn't do bench or squat, or really anything that I couldn't do with dumbbells. Now I'm doing them regularly, and unashamedly begging for spotters whenever I bench (my bench is really pretty pathetic, so it's almost embarrassing asking for a spot - but that's not my style to be embarrassed about anything - except dancing). In fact - and I don't mean to brag - I'm hittin' it pretty hard. The indoor track is a huge part of it... I hate running, and I hate running on a treadmill even more, and I have short, poorly coordinated legs, so the elliptical machine makes me feel like my hip is going to fly out of my pelvis. But the indoor track is cool - you get to run past people who are walking to make yourself feel fast, and with the right music it's actually kinda fun to try to run with the rhythm (if it's too slow or too fast I can't keep it up for too long though).

Speaking of which, I definitely listen to the Black Mages at the gym. In case you are unaware, the Black Mages are a Japanese progressive metal band led by Nobuo Uematsu, of Final Fantasy fame, which does covers of music from the Final Fantasy series. It's fantastic - and for someone like me who is used to getting a lot of work done listening to battle themes there's nothing like it to get my blood pumping for a workout. Apparently they have a relatively new album which I am thinking about investing in... Anyway, it almost makes me wish people could hear what I'm listening to at the gym, as I run around the track in old nerdy t-shirts. Now that I'm actually making some money, I may try to get some new ones :)

As for the details of my routine: I try to go for a nice warm-up with a few laps around the track, usually about a half mile at a decent pace, followed by a walked lap then straight to the weights (if I'm gonna be doing squats I take it easier on the running). After that, I split up my workout into two days, so one day I might do back and chest, and the next shoulders and legs (or some similar combination of those) and I throw in little things here and there, going for about 5 or 6 days a week at the gym, occasionally throwing in a much easier day, or a day of just running (if it sounds like a lot, its not - I'm usually in and out in about an hour). I aim for three sets of about 10 reps each for each exercise, after a warm-up set, and usually dropping the weight down because I can't maintain it yet. I figure I'm not working out hard enough to really worry too much about over-training at this point, so I'm not too worried about that. I also haven't been doing deadlifts - although I want to do them... I admit I've tried to do them before, and they make me sore in a bad way, which means I'm doing something wrong. Don't try to give me advice - I've watched youtube videos all about doing them right and I just can't get it... I'm too awkward. I'm avoiding the risk of injury by doing other things while I wait for an opportunity to have someone show me how to do them and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Also, if you have read Gary Taubes other book, How We Get Fat you will recall that he details an entire chapter to the "elusive" benefits of exercise. Basically his point is that if we envision exercise as a way of increasing the calories out part of the calories in/calories out dynamic, then we must realize how hopeless things are - the calories in/calories out idea is simply untrue. This is why I don't get to the gym and run for 20 miles or some other such nonsense (and because I'd give up and say eff that by about mile 1.5). However, exercise does have a tendency to reduce insulin resistance, which does help people lose weight. And if you lift weights it has a tendency to make you stronger, so you don't end up fat, old, bald, poor, and short (I remind myself whenever I don't want to go to the gym that I am already short, I am balding, I will one day be old, and I will never be fabulously rich - so if I can't at least avoid being fat I won't have much going for me - except for my charming personality, of course... and shocking good looks... and razor sharp mind and...). Uh, anyway, if the goal is weight loss, then the key to exercising is intensity. Intense workouts cause a shift in hormones that tends to make you lose fat when compared to lower-intensity workouts. All exercise will increase your production of cortisol, which, put simply, makes you fat. But more intense exercise also increases your production of glucagon, testosterone, adrenal hormones, and human growth hormone - which all have a tendency to make you less fat (women, don't worry about testosterone making you bulky - if it were that easy for guys they wouldn't workout) [I also want to do a post about glucagon someday and how it is basically the counter to insulin, but now is not the time]. In other words, the net hormonal effect on weight loss is more positive for intense workouts than for less-intense workouts. The details of it aren't entirely clear to me, but I do know that the calories in/calories out aspect of exercise isn't what makes you lose weight, and the hormonal explanation makes more sense. So it makes sense to go with what makes more sense.

Speaking of all this business, have you ever tried to find accurate information about exercising? I feel like it is exactly like diet/nutrition/health. Everyone is trying to sell something and promising to make you look like Suzanne Somers or Ahnold or make you lose 300 pounds in 6 days or something else that clearly requires too much plastic surgery or at least ought to have required more. I'll admit I've checked a few websites myself and almost been convinced - I have talked about Mark's Daily Apple before... He's the guy who talks about the "primal blueprint." And he was so close to being right about a lot of things - yes intense exercise is good; yes, we ought to eat fewer carbs in general; yes, most fats are not bad for you - that it's almost enough to suck you in, but his reasoning was so flawed. Just because our ancestor's ate it - even if for a long time - does not imply that it is good for us; and just because we did not eat it does not imply that it is bad for us.

Taubes showed this repeatedly in his books: The Japanese and many Asian peoples do fine on diets high in carbohydrates when they eat primarily rice, despite the fact that our ancestors likely didn't eat much rice. All people do poorly on diets high in sugar - regardless of the source of that sugar... It rots teeth, it causes heart disease, and liver diseases, and all kinds of horrible things - even though our ancestors likely ate as much sugar as possible (which didn't amount to much). Many mushrooms are poisonous when consumed raw, but are fine sources of trace nutrients when cooked - there's no way our ancestors ate them for too long. The Masai people of Africa live in a state of relative health despite subsisting on a diet of mostly cow's milk. And whey protein and fish oils - two sources of food that our ancestors likely didn't have year-round access to - have a tendency to be exceptionally healthy.

But anyway, then he went on to say that eating primal eliminated his B.O. Put bluntly, he's retarded for saying this. Put less bluntly, it discredits him greatly, and is further evidence that he is simply trying to sell something.

In a frustrated way, what I'm saying is that I'd like a definitive summary of what we know about exercise in a (relatively) concise format similar to Taubes' books so I could more easily sift through all the garbage to know what is true.

What else... I know!

*POOP WARNING*

So, I mentioned in passing in my previous post something about a bit of diarrhea... It was actually quite unpleasant - I believe this may be what was referred to in the "meat for a year" study as the factor that caused the scientists to change their plan to both subjects eating more fat than lean. I won't go into great detail - but it is interesting to note a few things. One is that it didn't seem to be severely dehydrating me - I didn't change my fluid intake much and didn't notice any ill effects. Two is that aside from an often unpleasant frequent urge to use the toilet, I didn't feel bad... there was no pain or cramping or headaches or those sorts of things that you might expect with this sort of issue. Three is that my over-consumption of cayenne pepper did cause a certain amount of unpleasantness... Combined with diarrhea it was actually really unpleasant at times... I'm trying to cut back (but it goes so well with roasts!) Four is that it went on for about a week, probably a couple days more. Since then I have been intentionally trying to eat more salt and more fat, and the problem seems to have cleared up.

I believe it may have been less severe than what the study mentioned because I was still eating mostly fat, rather than mostly lean - just not enough fat. But honestly who knows. I'm gonna try to stick to what I'm doing now though to basically avoid it. I wish I could pin down the cause more accurately, but there's no way of knowing without intentionally trying to force it to happen again - which I don't want to do.

*POOP WARNING OVER*

Anyway, I think it's time to end this post. Until next time.

So it begins again...

Hey... It's been a long time, so you may be wondering why I haven't been blogging much.

The real answer is that I've been really lazy about almost everything, so this rather small and unimportant part of my life was naturally the hardest hit. What I would tell you if I didn't have the facade of anonymity to protect me, however, is that I have been so busy with real life and school and work that I haven't had time to focus as much on my meatetarian diet, so there hasn't been much to blog.

Well, there hasn't been much to blog either, so that's actually part of the real answer too - I was bad over the holidays - as was to be expected - and since a few days after New Year's I've been pretty consistent. I've also decided to try adding more salt to my diet - it wasn't a lie that I've been busy with work, and when I'm gone for long periods of time, it's easier to pack a lunch than to buy one while I'm out and about... So I've been eating a lot of boiled eggs, and peeling them in my car while I'm stopped at lights (or on the ferry). And in the process, I've been eating my foods with less salt than is usual. I've actually had some bowel issues recently, and I think this (and stress) may be a part of it.

I also read a book - I think I listed under my "required reading" post - Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. The book was filled with a wealth of information about research done on the relationship between diet and health, mostly chronicling how utterly lacking it is. It did, however, point out that the theory that fats and cholesterol in the diet are harmful is simply unsubstantiated; and it presented a more thoroughly (though not entirely) substantiated theory that carbohydrates - particularly sugar - in the diet are harmful. Basically, it confirmed what I have been telling you from the beginning in ways that I could not begin to have access to (such as reviewing the relevant statistics/scientific papers). It was far from light reading, however, and even though I read it recently, many of the finer details escape me. For example, I was relaying this bit of information to a friend, and aside from Dr. Atkins (who was a clinician, not a researcher) I could not name a single researcher who had come to the conclusion that fats in the diet are harmless and nonfattening. Not that there weren't several researchers in the book mentioned by name who made such claims... it's just that there were so many that after a while I started forgetting names or blending them together. Those names that stick out were towards the beginning of the book, and the beginning of the book was about the faulty hypothesis of the evils of dietary fats.

Anyway, here's a brief summary followed by details: Taubes begins with an interesting introduction about President Eisenhower's attempts to follow a "heart healthy" diet, and descending into heart disease despite his efforts, eventually dying after experiencing eight (could be wrong on the number) myocardial infarctions (I love that expression). He then details the theory that dietary fats and cholesterol cause heart disease, and explains why it's wrong, and how it came to dominate the medical/research communities. Then he details a (not so) new hypothesis that dietary carbohydrates cause heart disease and fatness, and explains why it makes more sense (and explains how before the mid-20th century, this belief was widely held). Then he gets a bit specific about how we fatten, and how we get heart disease, and discusses some clinical diet trials showing that high fat diets tend to result in better weigh control, whereas standard calorie restriction diets almost invariably fail. He explains that the theory of "calories in, calories out" fattening/weight loss is faulty, and it makes more sense to base our theory of fattening and weight loss off the effects of hormones - in particular insulin. Towards the end he details some theories about obesity and diabetes and metabolic disorder and essentially concludes that we would be a lot better if if we ate more meat and less carbohydrates - virtually the exact opposite of what we have been told since the '50s and '60s.

On that note, Ancel Keys was the first to bring the fat-is-bad hypothesis to mainstream science, and he based this jump to the mainstream primarily on what is known as the "seven countries study." The seven countries study examined the relative risk of heart disease among middle-aged men in seven countries: the US, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Japan. The study showed, according to Keys, that among populations with high saturated fat intakes the rate of heart disease was increased.

The problems with Keys' seven countries study can be separated into many issues: First is that the study was initially of 22 countries, and if the 15 "discarded" countries are included with their dietary data, the alleged correlation between dietary saturated fat intake and heart disease starts to disappear; Second is the fact that the study was seen as being so conclusive - even if higher heart disease rates could be correlated with higher saturated fat intakes, that does not imply that the saturated fat intake causes the heart disease, or that adopting a low saturated fat diet could reduce your odds of developing heart disease ( however, it's quite obvious that this has been the conclusion of at least the American Heart Association and the like); Third is that Keys seemed to have intentionally misread the data to make it look as if dietary fat, especially saturated fat, were the culprit, when physiological studies implied the exact opposite; Fourth is that using the same data, we can see that higher sugar intake correlates much more strongly with higher heart disease rates than does any other variable in diet.

I could go on for more, but the point has already been made. Keys made an incorrect or at least extremely biased conclusion about diet and health, and pressed his point until everyone in the medical/research communities agreed with him. Other researchers followed in his footsteps, making similar mistakes by being blind to anything that didn't agree with what they expected the outcome to be. This led to the belief that eating meat makes you get fat and then get diabetes and then heart disease and then you die - which I hope my (almost) year has shown to be false.

Meanwhile, there were at least a few researches showing that high meat consumption was far from the ocean of maladies it was claimed to be. Vilhjalmur Stefansson (I've talked about him before) was part of a study about the effects of a year-long all-meat diet, about which many papers were written. There was a researcher by the name of Banting (related to the Banting who wrote his Letter on Corpulence) who discovered insulin, who was followed by researchers who delved into diabetes research, which led to a theory which is today known as "metabolic syndrome." Metabolic syndrome is essentially a less severe form of (type II) diabetes, characterized by a resistance to insulin, which tends to lead to fatness. This theory was developed by Gerald Reaven, who was also a proponent of low-carbohydrate diets (I'll admit, I had to look up Dr. Reaven, even though I remembered the name metabolic syndrome). This all makes sense, of course, based on the fact that diets high in carbohydrates necessarily force your pancreas to produce more insulin (in order to deal with the blood sugar). Chronically high insulin levels lead to insulin resistance, which leads to a vicious cycle in which the pancreas must produce even more insulin in order to keep blood sugar at healthy levels.

In addition to detailing studies that show meat isn't harmful but carbohydrates are, Taubes also demonstrates that the mainstream medical community seemed to shun those who disagreed - many of the researchers he mentioned lived in obscurity despite their cutting edge research (he mentions one man, whose name I cannot remember, whose experience working on the Manhattan Project and giant centrifuges led to the discovery of the many different particles which carry cholesterol, known collectively as lipoproteins, who worked in obscurity because his research showed that overall cholesterol levels barely correlated with heart disease risk - though particular types of lipoproteins were strongly correlated with increased heart disease risk, and with high carbohydrate diets).

He then takes apart the weight loss theory of calories in, calories out by revealing that even the medical communities that encourage people to "eat less and move more" accept that this lifestyle change is not enough to make most people lose weight for a significant period of time.

This whole idea of the ivory tower in a science with practical applications is something that had never occurred to me. Sure it can occur in a science like psychology - which has limited practical applications beyond making people feel good about themselves- and it does, considering the sharply skewed views of psychologists (I don't have to reveal how I feel about it here - google it if you must). But in a science with real, researchable, practical, and significant applications to how people lead their daily lives - which allegedly has physiology to back it up - I could not imagine scientific bias possibly being an issue.

Basically, this has been my review of the book - but this final point I'm trying to make is far and away the most significant one. The book reads like an expose on the flaws in the philosophy of science surrounding such areas of study as diet, nutrition, health, obesity, and even statistics. It is at times exciting, disheartening, victorious, and downright depressing - and perhaps I only found it so because I have developed a passion for these areas of study. But I can assure you that if it is read with an open mind, it will change your life in significant philosophical ways... This is not to say that you will find Jesus if you read this book, but hopefully you will no longer read headlines in newspapers and magazines, or listen to commercial on TV and believe a single word said without looking into it more deeply.

If I could add anything to the foreword of the book, it would be this: Forget everything you ever thought you knew about diet, nutrition, and health. Not because it is necessarily wrong, but because no one has ever told you the how and why of it because they deemed you incapable of understanding the science behind it. This grievous insult ought not be taken lightly - the problem with this is that the basics of statistics are the only aspect of the science that needs to be understood (the workings of the physiology are either true or untrue - proven or unproven and stated as such - your capacity to understand what it means for the advanced glycation end production to bind to the protein [mostly made up fancy concoction of words] is unnecessary, provided the physiology is being accurately and truly described), and the basics of statistics are this: correlation does not imply causation, and true conclusions about correlation can only be drawn from experiments with correctly controlled variables and those conclusions can only be about those variables (not related variables which were not controlled).

Enough about that book... lol.

That's enough for now - I really am trying to be better about my blog updates, but I wasn't lying about being busy. It's a blessing and a curse - since I enjoy this so much, I hate to have it taken from me by force - but working more and making money has its perks too :)

Until next time! Never eat sugar again... lol