Those discussions on what’s the best diet always amaze me. Everybody then proceeds on quoting some biochemistry process they don’t understand (as if gluconeogenesis was harmless and perfectly fine compared to regular glycogenolysis), talking about carbs and cortisol even though low carb is terrible for adrenals and the thyroid, blasting on their favorite enemy - be it sugar or anti nutrients or whatever boogeyman.
It’s always the same nutritionism obsessions. Meanwhile I’m eating my eggs, my grass fed nose to tail beef, greens, tons of fruits (120g of sugar a day, 500+ grams of carbs! I must be super unhealthy! Lol), avocados, starches that I digest well, protein shakes. 8g of potassium a day from real whole Foods. Calcium, check, magnesium, check, all the vitamins. Not vegan. Not vegetarian. Not paleo. Not whatever the fuck.
It. Ain’t. Hard.
Plus all the studies out there on strength athletes show that low carbing is retarded. Not even borderline. Full on full retard. And then you see them on the TRT message boards, nice and bald, weeping over low T levels blaming genetics.
Ancestral data estimates aren’t reliable and it depends highly on how you estimate. It also depends on when and where you are talking about. I know that some techniques (nitrogen isotope testing) indicate Paleolithic humans, at least in Europe, were as carnivorous as animals like wolves.
I do it for a number of reasons. It’s simpler. Easier to stick to (for me). I feel better. I stay lean and strong. My joints hurt less. It pairs nicely with my preferred training method. I find it works better for fasting (which I also like to do). It tastes better.
I don’t want to get too specific, but I think carbs depend a lot on activity. People probably also are built to have high carb periods and high fat period in the year. A totally sedentary person probably does not benefit by replacing fat with carbs above about 30% of total calories at maintenance. They probably don’t benefit by going much lower either. 30% will provide all of the needs of glucose/ketone dependent tissues and probably provides the most stable blood sugar, and blood sugar stability is emerging as being much more important than blood sugar average for health.
I think that saturated fat is totally safe, and for the most part monounsaturated fat and most animal fat is about 50% saturated and 30% monounsaturated. Omega-6s should not be used as a fuel source. They are easily turned into oxidative species in the body (or out) and they are pro-inflammatory. We only need trace levels of polyunsaturated fats. Saturated fat should be reduced if someone is overweight or insulin resistant but at maintenance calories a healthy person can get about as much of their calories as they want from saturated and monounsatured fat.
Real low effort post. Please accept that the majority of people simply either:
a) want to know how the system works
b) have some deficiencies or carry non trivial problems around.
c) want to drastically change some aesthetic aspect (weight, muscularity, habits, appetite etc) and need specific answers
If your thing works for you, good for you. But you’re not the dietary lynchpin. Imagine going to a lifting forum and saying "why those stupid articles and protocols, I do pushups and pullups, I run hills and I look like Anthony Joshua!"
Lastly, theory is not obsession. Vegans have to be ridiculously meticulous in order to make it work. And they have to keep crunching and munching 247. That’s not the case with carnivores, rather the opposite.
It might be a low effort post but people all over the internet have weird obsessions over numbers and ratios and what have you, and just won’t get started eating 80-90% of their calories from nutrient dense non packaged foods. Macronutrients don’t matter that much, if you eat real food things will sort themselves out.
But nowadays people are afraid of bananas because FrUcToSe, or eggs because ChOlEsTerOl. Pick your camp.
Trace polyunsaturated fats is terrible for the skin and hair but that’s most definitely not something modern lifters care about? Dr Swank has decades of high PUFA diets showing impressive results in patient.
Thing is, your talent probably spares you the downsides of what you call real food, ie fruit.
Most fruits have been tailored for straight yummyness. Whatever stupid arguments fruitarians might have had, grandpa’s apples are no more. The nutrional values are usually cited from ancient stats.
Again, if it works to you, fine. But for many if not most, it doesn’t.
Lol it’s so not it’s actually funny. What you’re describing is essentially the diet of upper middle class career women. Most people will not eat that crap (some-french-name-salad with chickenbreast and bitter, overpriced seeds) for long and that’s why they succumb to the many fatty enticements of fast food.
The low fat idiocy was probably the dumbest thing Bodybuilders helped to popularize because it works if you want to lean out and take drugs at the same time.
…it works and has worked for natural BBers too. This is a ridiculous blanket statement. I’ve been reading your comments, and I’m very confused as to how you deny studies, but tout politically charged right-wing bait phrases (just saying “leftist” or “liberal” is clearly enough to give one guy in here a raging erection for you) as indisputable facts.
For the record, I’m not vegan, and think it’s an extreme and unnecessary diet choice, but man, you are way out there, haha.
Worked for whom and for what? You only ever see the victor’s story! I guess I haven’t seen the famous tales of mediocre, natural competitors who go through the steroid diet sans roids to approve of their, slow, nerve wrecking mistransformation. What a cool, anti-inspiring story. I’m sure there’s two old women in Ohio who would pay to see the movie.
But we DO get to notice them through detecting the missing spots in online logs and privately shared anecdotes. You can’t prove a method by looking at a winners’ podium! What is the actual ratio of guys who make it through and look good versus the quitters and shoddy looking grinders? Oh, right, why should you care about losers- maybe that’s the point? That nutrition should be easy and uncomplicated? So why are there so many losers?
Want more blanket truths? The majority of general lifters try the classic bb-diet at some point and either see their gainz shrink away, feel terrible or a combination of both. Naturals in general don’t profit much from the very effective method of enhanced bulking and cutting. The puritan cope is that most guys simply don’t cut it because they are mentally weak. The question occurs, naturally, why people should actually bother to summon so much willpower -which we now know is actually a limited, internal resource- for something that was trivial and even unnecessary for eons. Maybe it’s the prissy cutter who has his priorities wrong?
And we haven’t even touched general health and wellbeing!
The anti fat-fad absolutely (again:bodybuilders only assisted this madness coincidentally and to be totally fair the popularisation of lifting as their accomplishment is a very good thing) wrecked two whole generation who are now fatter and sicker than ever before.
We all agree anyway that champion bodybuilders have terrible health which is handwaved as extreme outlier behaviour. But were they, really, in comparison, so extreme? So many youngsters today do their first cycle before their first bulk even. I bet some debaters in this very thread already took more pills than some second tier golden era lifters. Who cares about their passive-defensive, testy opinions?
We are on thin ice. Beneath, a blubber sea of lies and shame.
Did it though or did that just happen to be the fad at the time when health declined? Macronutrient percentages have been on both ends over time, while disease and obesity have climbed linearly. It’s calories that have increased. It’s sugar that’s increased. It’s not a low fat diet issue.
Obviously, these guys are winners. My point is that others who are not as intelligent, determined or simply talented can’t tell their story and we don’t want to hear it.
That’s what’s ridiculous here. He uses bad low fat diets as an example, and people who can’t follow them as another example. Then sprinkle in a few shots at “studies” to discredit anyone who might provide a contrary view, and add a side of made-up anecdotes about what people are probably taking, boom - reason-proof absolute truth!
