How Much Protein Do You Need to Build Muscle? In short, not very much. Not very much at all.

Thats the short answer. Perhaps 5% of caloric intake at the very most. But this is NOT the whole story of course. While many reading this may not be interested in building muscle, it is still a very fascinating topic that provides many insights into how the body works. Most people are more interested in shrinking, not getting bigger (talking about the whole body, not certain parts!). And the funny thing is thats when protein really is very useful. Unless of course you want to lose more muscle mass than fat so you can be a marathon runner or runway model or something. Or you want to be a wealthy Manhattan woman for Halloween or something. Then by all means lose weight on a low-calorie raw vegan diet. Its unparalleled for lean tissue loss. Plus, who wants to be carrying around a huge, heavy brain? Its a terrible burden (yes, your brain is part of your lean tissue, and it, along with all your vital organs, can shrink from dieting). There are a lot of myths about protein intake. Most bodybuilding information suggests that protein intake needs to be, at the very least, 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body weight. For me that might be, oh, 170 grams lets say. Some would recommend TWICE that much! But I just built more muscle than I ever have in my life and increased my squat and deadlift by 80 pounds each over the last 3 months eating below 100 grams of protein per day on a near vegetarian diet. The trick? Ah, calorie surplus. The most relied upon technique for building muscle. In a calorie surplus you cant help but grow new lean tissue. Its automatic. Even laying around doing nothing, the average person will gain about a pound of lean tissue for every pound they gain when intentionally overfeeding. Doing some weightlifting ensures even more growth. The higher the calorie intake, the lower the protein requirements for maintaining muscle mass. 30 grams of protein per day is sufficient for maintaining muscle mass or what is called nitrogen balance if you are a normal sized adult male assuming your calorie intake is quite high. And it doesnt take much above that level to trigger muscle growth. Each pound of new muscle contains about 150 grams of protein. Hypothetically, a person could still grow a pound of muscle in 10 days with only 15 grams of protein above what is required to maintain nitrogen balance. And if you are eating, say, 5000+ calories per day like I did from February to the end of April, 45 grams of protein daily equates to only 3.6% of all dietary calories coming from protein. Virtually every food on earth has a higher protein content than that (excluding candy and sweetened drinks). Thus, eating lots of calories ensures adequate protein for muscle growth. Keep in mind that human breast milk is only about 6% protein. And there is plenty of lean tissue gains on a diet of exclusively mothers milk at 6% protein. The average American diet is around 15% protein on the high end of protein consumption worldwide. Yet bodybuilders throw around all kinds of numbers like 30% protein, 40% protein, and sometimes even higher!

So the answer to the question How Much Protein Do You Need to Build Muscle? is not a simple one. There may be lots of people out there giving simple answers perhaps to keep people from the tiring activity of thinking about it. But the answer is not simple. It depends entirely on the context. So lets examine a different context How much protein do you need to build muscle while you are in a calorie deficit? Ha! Eat as much protein as you like. And even lift as many weights as you like. You are unlikely to see any muscle gains at all. If you do, it will likely last only for a short-time before it comes to a halt. Take calories low enough and you will lose tons of muscle even eating 200+ grams of protein per day and doing even the most well-designed weight training program for growth. How about eating a more or less maintenance level of calories (whatever that is One guy who follows the site is eating over 8,000 calories per day and his weight is steady despite doing only small amounts of exercise Chief is evidently eating below maintenance calories with daily 5-plate buffet splurges on his unique high-calorie weight loss program)? Aha! Alas we have found the reason why bodybuilders eat an absolute crapload of protein! It seems to have almost a dose-response-like impact on ones ability to grow muscle tissue while at maintenance calories. While it will be slow goin in terms of how fast you can build muscle, if you want to build muscle without eating a ton of calories, protein indeed can help. Likewise, in a recent overfeeding study, it was found that those eating the diets with the highest percentage of their calories from protein gained the most lean mass. So there is some validity to high protein intakes for muscle growth, but calories still trump protein overall when it comes to gaining muscle. And carbohydrates play just as big of a role, if not an even more important role in lean tissue gains helping protein to be deposited into muscle cells instead of being burned for energy. As Jamie Eason, perhaps the most visible female fitness model on earth if you look at how many magazine covers and advertisements she has been featured in says, If I want to grow more muscle, I just eat more carbs. I agree. I had a hell of a time growing muscle on a highprotein diet because my carbs were too low. No surprises there, as nearly all competitive bodybuilders eat carbs and protein together religiously when trying to put on size. But I still have one problem with all the high-protein fanaticism when it comes to muscle growth Protein lowers appetite. It also takes the most calories to digest, so there are many wasted calories on a high-protein diet. Excess protein also seems to have a long-term metabolism-lowering effect (which impairs muscle growth and exercise performance), perhaps due to the previous two factors perhaps for other reasons (like excesses of tryptophan slowing down metabolic rate). If calories are the single most important factor in achieving muscle growth, with protein functioning like an added bonus, and protein reduces net calories ingested and reduces appetite it makes it really hard to eat enough total food to grow muscle if protein intake truly becomes too high like well above 25% of calorie intake. In other words, I might have fared better overfeeding with more protein, but that is just a hypothetical scenario. No way I could have eaten 5,000 calories per day trying to choke down egg whites, tuna, skim milk, protein shakes or even fattier cuts of beef.

My official stance on muscle growth would thus be eat the food (ETF). Its probably a mistake that so many young weight lifters are reaching first for the protein powder and cans of tuna when they first start lifting weights. I made that mistake in my youth as well, and didnt get very far with my training. The times when you really should think about prioritizing protein above other macronutrients is when you are doing enough exercise to trigger weight loss, or losing weight because youre not eating much. At least, this would be wise if you care anything about your ratio of muscle mass to body fat (hopefully you dont my life was certainly much better before I ever thought about such a thing!). Currently Im doing some weightlifting AND Im hiking quite a bit maybe 30 miles a week. And my history with hiking shows me that strength and muscle mass decrease significantly with this amount of hiking unless you eat a ton of protein or do resistance exercise with it. Im doing both. I want to protect this strength and muscle I put on. With any interest in toning up muscles and keeping them strong, eating a low-protein diet or relying exclusively on endurance exercise for weight loss is a great way to worsen your body composition long-term especially knowing that your chances of rebound weight gain are thought to coincide with the amount of muscle mass you lose while dropping weight. Of course, I dont recommend or advocate intentional weight loss aside from increasing physical activity, sleeping more, de-stressing, and eating more nutritious, less stimulating foods for that very reason (rebound weight gain, but with more fat and less muscle and a lower metabolism than you had before you started). But whether your weight loss is intentional or not, this probably is the time to prioritize your protein intake an almost universal practice amongst those who have lost significant amounts of weight without gaining it back within 5 years time. But only while you are losing weight. Beyond that I dont encourage overconsumption of protein. Protein does stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, and I dont think doing that in excess is desirable. Unless you like bone loss and freezing cold hands and toes and hypothyroidism.

How Many Carbohydrates Should YOU Eat? By Matt Stone Cmon, fire me up. Pour your sugar on me. Oh, I cant get enough. Im hot, sticky sweet. From my head to my feet, yeah. ~Def Leppard The answer to our question, and just about any health and nutrition question, is it depends. But the following is a level-headed, science-based, as well as experience-based set of guideposts to help you determine the right answer for you as an individual. Carbohydrates have received a thorough lashing of late with the explosion of self-proclaimed nutrition experts on the internet, of which I was guilty of being one myself when I first started doing this (and bashed carbohydrates in favor of fat in delusional hopes that fat was some undiscovered ideal fuel source. uh, not so much as it turns out). But carbs still rule, and will always rule, especially when looking at the whole spectrum of generally healthy diet and lifestyle practices.

Although I do believe there are a few rare cases of people who may do better obtaining their dietary energy primarily from fat rather than carbohydrates, temporarily or permanently, those are anomalies that dont really enter into a conversation about general food consumption. I consider the minimum carbohydrate consumption, for most, is roughly 50% of dietary calories. Thus, if you need 3200 calories per day, 1600 of those calories should come from carbohydrates about 400 grams. However, the minimum increases any time you consider doing physical activity. Again, there are many individuals in poor enough physical condition that exercise will only make their health worse, not better. But from a general perspective, being physically active has far more benefits than drawbacks. Taking exercise into consideration, the logic then follows on this trajectory 1.The more carbohydrates you eat before exercise, the more liver and muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrate) you have. 2.The more stored glycogen you have, the harder you can exercise and the longer you can exercise. 3.The more carbohydrates you eat after exercise, the faster and more fully you will replenish glycogen stores. 4.The faster you replenish glycogen stores, the more often you can exercise. Carbohydrates and full glycogen stores do other things as well, such as lower cortisol, increase metabolic rate, and improve sleep other very potent ingredients in the overall health formula. Thus, carbohydrates are the primary substance allowing you to exercise more vigorously and more frequently due to their recovery-expediting effect. Combined with the metabolic effects of carbohydrates on cortisol, muscle fiber type (more fast twitch), amount of glycogen storage in muscles and liver, and so on carbohydrates provide everything from enhanced insulin sensitivity and glucose clearance to improved fitness and body composition (changes in body composition are most influenced by long-term, cumulative adaptations to exercise of which carbohydrates determine how your body performs and responds to exercise stimuli). Consider the following from Ellen Colemans thorough review of carbohydrate requirements for exercise A mixed diet (50 percent calories from carbohydrate) produced a muscle glycogen content of 106 mmoL/ kg and enabled the subjects to exercise 115 minutes. A low-carbohydrate diet (less than 5 percent of calories from carbohydrate) produced a muscle glycogen content of 38 mmoL/kg and supported only one hour of exercise. However, a high-carbohydrate diet (more than 82 percent of calories from carbohydrate) provided 204 mmoL/kg of muscle glycogen and enabled the subjects to exercise for 170 minutes. In other words, feeling and looking better boils down to getting in good physical condition. And getting in good physical condition is not maximally possible without lots of carbohydrates. The more the better in fact at least up to the point in the diet where so much fat is displaced that the diet is no longer palatable enough to foster adequate calorie intake.

The minimum carbohydrate intake for anyone engaging in pretty regular physical activity (say, an hour of moderate exercise per day on average), is considered to be 5 grams per kg of lean body weight. For someone like me with a lean weight around 85-90 kg, thats over 400 grams per day. But with my extensive exercise experience with a wide range of exercise volumes, frequency, and intensities talking - most people will feel an immediate improvement in performance and recovery, as well as a stronger desire to be physically active (and enjoy doing stuff physically more in general), in the range recommended for much harder training athletes 7-12 grams per kg of lean body weight each day. I would be more than happy to donate a portion of my genitalia to have had a firmer grasp on this back in the peak of my hiking and cycling days. Once I ate a measly 150-ish grams of carbs per day all summer while hiking 700 very slow, painful miles. Back then I had trouble putting things together, even when I had trouble keeping up with a sedentary, potbellied fish biologist on one trip. Lack of carbs must starve the brain of considerable glucose as well! How hard you exercise is also a big factor. The higher your heart rate while exercising, the faster you rip through glycogen supplies. Even 15 minutes of very intense exercise is enough to reduce glycogen stores by half perhaps even more if you are really going at your maximum threshold. Easy, light exercise spares glycogen and takes a lot less carbohydrate to recover from. But even if you are doing fairly light endurance exercise like hiking, youll notice you go much faster and much farther without breathing so hard if you eat more carbohydrates as opposed to less. But, like anything else in the world of nutrition, exercise, and health in general, there is nothing that compares to personal experimentation as long as it is intelligently-guided (you are paying attention to the appropriate markers to determine success that is). Play around with your diet and see for yourself if this holds true. Pay close attention to: 1.Your desire to exercise. 2.How hard or easy it feels when you are exercising. 3.How long it takes you to recover. To get your carbohydrate intake up I recommend sweet fruit, dried fruit, juice and sweetened low-fat milk, breakfast cereals, starches with minimal added fat such as rice, bread, and potatoes, and exercise drinks containing dextrose or maltodextrin especially before, during, and immediately after exercise. When selecting from these foods, you should eat what digests best, tastes the best to you, and allows you to get in the most carbs without peeing your brains out (lots of carbs per volume of water taken in with them, as discussed most thoroughly in Eat for Heat).

Mark Sisson Hey, sorry about my absence late last week. Wednesday distraction, Thursday drama, Friday crisis, and weekend recovery explains the last 5 days. Good stuff. All is well now though. Where were we? Ah yes, I wanted to continue our discussion of some popular diets/gurus. As promised, today we discuss Mark Sisson of http://www.marksdailyapple.com/

For starters, I want to make this perfectly clear. Sisson is one of the best health icons on earth hes truly the best of the low-carbers. He is running around advocating a nutritious, whole foods-based diet with no truly crippling restrictions sort of an 80/20 rule approach. The guy drinks coffee at times, eats chocolate, has cheat meals, and otherwise has taken a general health blueprint and custom built it into something fairly safe, reasonable, easy to follow, and fun. His exercise advice is great. He encourages good sleep, lots of rest, having fun outdoors, getting natural sunlight the list of pros goes on and on.

In an honest review of a health guru, you have to admit hes really on track with a lot of stuff. But its also important to spell out exactly where Sisson comes up short not to attack the guy or nitpick his program, but more to provide a resource online for those who are failing miserably following his general guidelines and need to hear the other side of the story. At the end of the day, there are many out there that will be demolished by trying to run sprints, lift heavy things, and go on long walks fueled by less than 150 grams of carbohydrates per day what Sisson calls the cutoff that leads to insidious weight gain if you exceed such levels. Dont even get me started on that. Well, okay I guess I guess I should take a closer look at that bold statement. Thats what this post is all about Yes, you heard that right. In Mark Sissons book, The Primal Blueprint, he shows a little chart with carbohydrate levels ideal for weight loss, weight maintenance, and the levels of carbohydrate intake that lead to, in his words, insidious weight gain. Get above 150 grams of carbohydrates per day in your diet and you enter the danger zone. I have said this many times and I will say it again in all the information Ive ever read on nutrition and health, this could very well be the dumbest and most unsubstantiated tidbit Ive ever come across. It is downright retarded, with 5 billion. 5 BILLION living exceptions to the rule that a carbohydrate intake exceeding 150 grams per day triggers insidious weight gain. This is just plain stupid. I couldnt even believe my eyes when I read it. This guy is, and should be, the laughingstock of anyone who studies obesity or nutritional science. He completely undermines his credibility as an intelligent person with this one uber-knuckleheaded and poorly-thought out conclusion. Let me tell you how I really feel about it 99% of the 5 BILLION lean people alive on planet earth right now, most of them living in Africa and Asia, eat far more than 150 grams of carbohydrates per day. Meanwhile, countries like the United States enjoy one of the lowest carbohydrate diets in the world barely getting 50% of their dietary calories from carbohydrates while everyone else on earth aside from the Masai, Eskimo, and some Europeans that also have serious obesity problems get far more of their dietary calories from carbohydrates. The Chinese eat more than 400 grams of carbohydrates per day. Every species of primate gets 70% or more of their dietary calories from carbohydrates.

150 grams of carbohydrates. Ha. It has been a couple of months since Ive even eaten a MEAL with fewer than 150 grams of carbohydrates. Ive got at least 150 grams of carbs in me by 9am each day, and often 400 grams or more by noon.

Okay, thats enough. Just had to get that out of my system. But here are some other important things that simply must be mentioned before we leave the subject of Sisson Consider what I heard on Wednesday during my distraction from the computer for a day. I traveled across the state of Florida to meet with a very wealthy man with health problems and a strong desire to restore his vitality. Many years ago this guy had spent time at the Pritikin institute with low-fat guru Nathan Pritikin. Pritikin, according to this guy, was really a portrait of health that lived and breathed his health advice and looked young, lean, and more or less perfect. Of course, on the inside he was dying committing suicide at 69 and reported to perhaps have leukemia. He was replaced by some other guy who supposedly looked even more impressive, with absolutely no body fat whatsoever and the picture-perfect body of what, in the modern era, is erroneously used to symbolize health. He died far younger supposedly, of a stroke typical of someone with low cholesterol. Professional athletes are looked upon as being physical specimens. Of course, athletes are notorious for long lists of health problems and dying young.

I bring this up, not because its all that relevant to Sisson, but because the idea that having a 6-pack is healthy and not having a 6-pack is second best is absolutely stupid. Being lean and attractive by modern standards, if anything, is a sign of terrible health not great health. I think of a supermodel having the worst health, followed by a lean, female collegiate athlete, followed by the morbidly obese, followed by professional athletes, followed by everyone else. Most obese people eating at McDonalds today can at least reproduce. The same cant be said about supermodels or say, female distance runners most of which cannot reproduce. At the very least, seeing someones abs because there isnt enough fat on them to obscure them from view is not a cue to get on your knees and start worshipping. This also brings up the question would Sisson be obese and unattractive if he had oatmeal or toast or even Pop Tarts and Fruit Loops with pasteurized milk on them for breakfast? Of course not. I know far more people with abs that eat Pop Tarts than eat a Paleo diet. Tyson Gay eats at McDonalds and eats ice cream. Should we do that because he has abs and can run real fast? Or should we eat what Sisson says to eat because of his abs? Whose abs determine the composition of your diet? How much of Sissons appearance can be attributed to the junk food diet he was raised on and how much can be attributed to the low-carb Paleo diet he has eaten for the last decade or whatever? He was a world class athlete on standard fare. Is it a surprise that he also looks good doing lots of smart training while otherwise taking great care of himself and eating a lower carbohydrate diet? Looks are more or less meaningless. Diets of the obese and the lean have been compared. There is almost no difference whatsoever. But the real reason I wanted to do this post was an email I was sent recently. It was the same old story. Followed Sisson, everything was great, then everything went to hell within a year. This is the same thing that happened to me when I was eating 150 grams per day or less of carbohydrates for an extended period of time. It is very important for everyone who reads this to understand basic human physiology here. This is not a fluke or one in a million response to a low-carbohydrate diet. Low-carb

diets are a great stress to most people, increasing the catecholamines, advancing the rate of aging, slowing down thyroid function, increasing inflammation, and reducing many important anti-aging hormones like testosterone, progesterone, and DHEA. While many low-carb zealots will deny reality and go about searching busily to find evidence that supports low-carb eating thats what they do, defend a pre-conceived conclusion this is the simple biological truth as I understand it Glucose is the ultimate source of cellular energy. Short and medium chain saturated fatty acids like butyric acid and lauric acid are the only thing that can compete. If you do not get enough glucose, stress hormones rise. At first this can feel amazing giving you tireless energy, blunting appetite, and burning up body fat. But over time the wear and tear on the adrenal glands to produce this increased demand for stress hormones catches up with you. When the adrenal energy finally wanes you are left with lower thyroid hormone production the adrenal hormones oppose the thyroid and even cause the thyroid gland to atrophy (the catecholamines cause the thymus the epicenter of the immune system to atrophy as well, which would explain my observation that low-carb eating increases proneness to allergies, food allergies, and autoimmune disease).

When the thyroid is negatively impacted, the whole system goes into decline. The thyroid controls the production of hormones like progesterone, DHEA, and testosterone perhaps the most important anti-aging hormones known. It is no surprise why it is so common for women to have reproductive and menstrual issues on a low-carbohydrate diet, especially if that is paired with a lot of stress or exercise or lack of sleep and so forth. Insulin resistance increases and glycogen storage becomes impaired. Thus, eating carbohydrates can trigger massive hypoglycemic attacks (which, oddly, often reinforces peoples devotion to a low-carb diet). In men, testosterone falls. I for one had some pretty substantial erectile problems on a low-carb diet for example. My athletic performance and recovery was at an all-time low. The list goes on and on. To think that no health problems could emerge from eating a low carbohydrate diet is absurd. I have had plenty from chest pains to increased allergies to foul body odor to mood disorders to digestive problems to insomnia. Hundreds of people have gravitated to this site after their health was ravaged by prolonged low-carbohydrate intake. Lack of carbohydrate intake is just one issue with low-carbohydrate diets. Another is intake of excessive amounts of animal protein, which I have found to be particularly destructive. Animal protein concentrates highly-inflammatory amino acids like tryptophan, methionine, and cysteine. After the growth and development stage of life, unless you are trying to add muscle mass for bodybuilding, there is only a tiny dietary requirement for these amino acids to maintain lean body mass. Any excess is, I believe, a huge detriment. Eating large quantities of protein in general, particularly without complementary carbohydrate, raises the hormone glucagon as well, which triggers the stress hormone and inflammatory chain reaction in the body. At the end of the day, while there could be some individual exceptions no doubt, a carbohydratebased diet is vastly superior for health, longevity, and human performance athletic or otherwise. By

carbohydrate-based I dont mean low-fat, but just 50% of dietary calories or so, maybe drifting towards 60-70% of dietary calories if you are a hard-training athlete. Anyway, Im done with this rant. The point of this post is very simple. There are people out there brainwashed into believing that mimicking a caveman by fasting, eating a low-carbohydrate diet with a bunch of meat, etc. is a surefire path to everlasting health and Sisson-like abs. This is false. More than that, some aspects of Sissons approach are causing health problems in people, even in those with seemingly-miraculous health benefits initially like those I experienced with a similar approach. Abandoning nonsensical phobias like the fear of insidious weight gain if more than 150 grams of carbohydrates are consumed is very important, and there are literally millions of people out there with low-carb-induced health problems that could be easily overcome if they were able to get past their carbophobic stigma. For recovering from some of these issues and guru infatuation Sisson or otherwise, read Diet Recovery on how to recover your metabolism from prolonged restricted dieting of any kind

Is a Low-Carb Diet Counterproductive? I was asked to shed some light this morning on why I think low-carb diets are counterproductive for healing the metabolism. Thought I would share an elaborated version of my response Several things make me very leery of going low-carb, or at least make me feel that it is counterproductive: 1) Several authors, such as Diana Schwarzbein and Barry Sears talk about cortisol being raised on a low-carb diet as if it were common biochemistry knowledge. Knowing what I know about cortisol, a low-carb diet seems very undesirable. Diana Schwarzbein repeats the mantra that going too low in carbohydrates raises cortisol and adrenaline time and time again throughout her work. Keep in mind she observed this by tracking her patients hormone levels as a practicing endocrinologist. Barry Sears emphatically states: the longer you stay in ketosis, the more your fat cells adapt so that they are transformed into fat magnets, becoming 10 times more active in accumulating fatA high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet drives insulin levels too low, thereby causing hypotension, fatigue, irritability, lack of mental clarity, loss of muscle mass, increased hunger, and rapid fat regain when carbohydrates are reintroduced into the diet. Not exactly a prescription for anti-aging. This coupled with the increase in cardiovascular mortality because insulin levels are too low, simply reinforces the need to maintain insulin within a zone: not too high, not too low. This is probably due to cortisol, particularly the fat magnet claim. Although not everyone experiences these things on a low-carb diet, I experienced almost all of them, and know many others who have as well. The longer I went low-carb, the worse those symptoms got. 2) My own personal health eventually deteriorated on a low-carb diet. My pet allergies and asthma increased, I had digestive problems both heartburn and mild constipation, became very grouchy, and developed foul body and breath odor, and even eventually started to have tooth pain (although

on zero carb I did not). Add sleep problems and the re-appearance of gas and slight acne to the list too. I had none of these experiences in the beginning stages. Quite the contrary actually. Everything seemed to improve and I had thought, like many do, that I had found the Holy Grail of health. Note: I was the perfect low-carber too. All my dairy products and meats were grassfed/pastured and local. My dairy was unpasteurized. All my produce was organic most from farmers markets. 3) Even Dr. Atkins states in Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution that the Atkins diet, long-term, has the tendency to shut down thyroid function. He states that on page 303: remember that prolonged dieting *including this one+ tends to shut down thyroid function. This is usually not a problem with the thyroid gland but with the liver, which fails to convert T4 into the more active thyroid principle, T3. The diagnosis is made on clinical grounds with the presence of fatigue, sluggishness, dry skin, coarse or falling hair, an elevation in cholesterol, or a low body temperature. 4) The mere presence of ketone bodies from going low in carbohdyrates is known to intensify insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is the whole reason people go on low-carb diets in the first place, and is the root problem worsened by a low-carb diet. 5) The most major metabolic and digestive problems that people have come to me seeking help for were caused by going too low in carbohdyrates for a long period of time. One kid had ruined his digestion and metabolism so severely that he developed hypogonadism, was suicidal, and couldnt manage to choke down more than 1,500 calories per day without severe bloating. This was a formerly-healthy young man in his 20s that did this to himself by being totally dedicated to good health. His diet consisted of mostly raw dairy products, raw grassfed beef, and sauerkraut a combination of following ideas derived from Wolfgang Lutz, Aajonus Vonderplanitz, and the Weston A. Price Foundation. Only a fruitarian diet seems to be capable of matching this level of degeneration. 6) Broda Barnes stated: it has been clearly established that a high protein diet lowers the metabolic rate, *therefore+ symptoms of hypothyroidism will be aggravated Hypoglycemia may be controlled on the high protein diet, but the other symptoms of thyroid deficiency which usually accompany hypoglycemia are aggravated. AND when the diet was changed so that it was low in fat but high in protein and with enough carbohydrate to prevent diarrhea, symptoms of hypothyroidism appeared. Cholesterol level in the blood became elevated and in order to keep it within normal range, four additional grains of thyroid daily were needed. Apparently, a diet high in protein requires additional thyroid for its metabolism. 7) Given the ongoing topic of omega 6 overload on the cellular level, a high fat/low-carb diet is almost always higher in total omega 6 polyunsaturated fat as well even if vegetable oils are excluded. This may be very significant, it may not be the end of the world. The issue needs further exploration. A low-carb diet will typically have twice the amount of omega 6 as a typical, low vegetable-oil diet with more calories coming from carbohydrate. My estimates, using ESHA software,

of my low-carb diet included at least 15 grams of omega 6 per day. My diet over the past several days has had an average of just 3 grams of omega 6 per day. Significant? Who knows, but its thoughtprovoking. This is just a short list of reasons. But you get the idea. Its not that a low-carb or even zero-carb diet cant be a healthy diet. Eskimos proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. The question is, given that the world seems to be in metabolic decline, with widespread insulin resistance, low body temperature, and more is a low-carb diet the most effective strategy at fixing the core problem, or might it actually be counterproductive? You can read much a much deeper critique of low-carbohydrate diets in the book 12 Paleo Myths, as well as two others included in the 180 Platinum Collection.

More Low-Carb Craziness Still listening to the Real Food Summit, and today caught two talks, Zoe Harcombe and Barry Groves. I wanted to bang my head against the wall for some of the wacky stuff I was hearing, especially from Groves. I wont give a point by point breakdown, but some quick and dirty thoughts. Groves repeatedly misrepresents facts to fit his preferred low or no-carb diet. He says traditional human diets were heavy on animal fat and featured few or no carbs, ignoring the many, many human cultures that did eat starch-heavy diets (probably in fact, the majority did). And even those groups which ate lots of fat valued plant foods. As Melissa McEwen points out, its a myth that Inuit ate zero carbs. (As an aside, even meat contains muscle glycogen and isnt zero carb.) He creates a false dichotomy between a hard-line vegan diet and a carnivorous diet, as if these were the only two options for humans, and then, having built his strawman, rightly dismisses vegan diets and wrongly concludes that we shouldnt eat carbs. At the end of his talk, he even equivocates on whether were omnivores, and says we dont really need plant foods. Just because we can get by without them doesnt make it optimal, and the fact that humans everywhere have eaten lots of carbs when they have the chance suggests to me that there are benefits. Coupled with our stress response when we go too low on carbs, my recommendation is to eat the food and dont let highfalutin arguments incite extreme behavior. Zoe Harcombe was a little more interesting; she pointed out the stark figure that anorexia has the highest death rate among all mental illness, which is yet one more danger to dieting and valorizing the long-term losers. The addictive personalities that keep weight off put themselves at much greater risk for eating disorders like anorexia. You dont want that. She also rightly points out the flawed science demonizing saturated fats and animal foods, and emphasizes their value in our diet. Still, she seemed caught up in carbohydrate hating too. Both she and Groves said that the government recommendations to eat less fat and more unrefined starch precipitated the boom in obesity, diabetes and related illness. Much as I dont jive with his vegan conclusions, years ago Tim Robbins pointed out in The Food Revolution that Americans (and probably Brits too in Harcombes case) didnt actually start eating this way when the government made its recommendations. More processed food, yeah, but a diet based around nutritious, mainly unrefined starchy foods? Hardly.

That doesnt a prove starch-based diet is best, but that it is just dumb to indict a diet that people by and large arent eating for the health problems they face. Thats it for today. Catch you next time.

Paleo Fail

I have written about the before and after of eating a low-carb Paleo or low-carb non-Paleo diet for going on three years now. While it is extremely common to lose weight without effort, hunger, or cravings and have amazing energy levels to boot (and temporary alleviation of health problems), that doesnt make it healthy, sustainable, or permanent. In what I would venture to guess is the majority of those that embark on a low-carb diet, the results are short-lived, followed by the emergence of a clusterf$%# of new health problems related to adrenal burnout, hypothyroidism, and the hot mess that stems from it. Because of the roughly 3-12 month window of tremendous vigor, vitality, and effortless weight loss that many, myself included, experienced on a low-carb diet I have dubbed this the low-carb honeymoon. Ive received no shortage of grief from people over my criticism of the deified low-carb Paleo diet. Low-carb, and particularly low-carb Paleo which combines two ideologies, is served up in the bowels of the internet as being the underground solution to the deadly and corrupt eating recommendations that flourish in mainstream media and academia. While I have little love for Western Medicine, or the industrial health/corporate food/drug/agriculture empire, that doesnt mean that low-carb Paleo is the great secret to health that has been stifled by the man. Anyway, in my experience personally and in communication with tens of thousands of people all over the world for the last half decade, I can say definitively that low-carbohydrate eating, with or without the silly Paleo fungus that often attaches to the groin region of this movement (manifesting in the desire to fast even when you have signs of a low metabolism, and avoid acceptable and sometimes preferable food sources like grains and dairy products) can be dangerous. Sure, anything can be dangerous. Im not saying that its not dangerous to eat fast food daily and sit around completely immobile on the couch for 30 years. Im not saying that it cant also end in disaster if you partake of the predominantly legume, grain, and soy-based diet of the mainstream while jogging daily. This too can end in disaster. Any diet and lifestyle endeavor can be dangerous, and any food or beverage or activity can be highly detrimental in the right context. But its important to plant seeds in those that are blinded by infatuation, so that a little light bulb goes off in their brains when they do, indeed, start to suffer some of the consequences of their dietary and lifestyle explorations Consequences like hypothyroidism, with obvious signs such as puffiness in the face, loss of sex drive, inability to exercise or recover from exercise, loss of energy, frequent illness or infection, being cold

all the time, increased aches and pains, hair loss, mood disorders, menstrual irregularities, or any number of different ominous signs of dysfunction. Anyway, here is a great example of someone who did what dozens of us here have done 1) Got really unhealthy by eating and living really unhealthfully 2) Did low-carb or low-carb Paleo diet and maybe began exercising a lot too 3) Lost a ton of weight 4) Thought Paleo was the greatest thing on earth the answer to all things, and that carbohydrates, a biologically-inappropriate substance to be consuming in quantities impossible to obtain during the Paleolithic era, were the cause of all that ails modern humans. 5) Began to get ill 6) Began to gain fat and lose muscle, looking worse despite having looked great at six months into the diet and exercise recommended by typical Paleo aficionados 7) Stuck with it out of the belief that maybe the failure is due to a lack of discipline, going even further in the extreme direction of carbohydrate restriction all the way down to a zero carbohydrate diet 8) Got even sicker, hitting rock bottom somehow 9) Finally said screw it, getting curious about what some low-carb Paleo hater (me usually) said about it not being the miracle panacea its touted to be 10) Reversed health problems immediately Anyway, here is what was sent to me by Korg Kcuf (not actual name). If you remember anything, remember that short-term results can be deceiving. There are hundreds of ways to lose weight over a 6-month period, but all of the ways that have been studied end in long-term failure and weight regain even if you stick to the diet you lost the weight on. Health is not about how you look, but how you feel. In Korgs case, he steadily looked and felt worse on low-carb Paleo. I personally looked better on low-carb by modern standards, but feel much better now Hey Matt, I have been a long time reader ever since you and Richard had that back and forth on Freetheanimal. That really opened my eyes to a world outside low carb paleosphere. I know youre busy and probably get tons of email requests but I figure its worth a shot to see if you can help me with the direction of my diet. Heres a little summary up until now I started paleo around 6 years ago after a long stint of eating horrible and binge drinking, I was 22, 220~lbs, 5,11 and weak as a baby. I radically changed my diet and life to a strict paleo (Loren Cordains version) and started working out heavily. For about 6 months everything was amazing, got down to 178, was the leanest I had been since I was 16 or so and had decent energy, then things got bad. I started not being able to heal after workouts and lost my sex drive big time, also started to get

dry skin and dandruff. Of course at the time I was so enamored with paleo that I figured I should get stricter. Started IFing (intermittent fasting), stopped drinking all alcohol and no sugar/salt of any kind. Anyway long story short, I got worse over the course of a couple years so much so that I couldnt workout from lack of recovery and I gained back 3/4ths of the weight. After that I went nuts trying to figure out the best diet, still living in paleo world but cheating all the time cause I couldnt stomach all those nuts and veggies. Thats about the time I read your site and started reading other sites who advocated high carbs, this to me was insane-sounding. Anyway I didnt actually follow your refeed plan until about 4 months ago after a failed attempt at complete carnivory. I made it 9 days on meat and cheese alone and I got some horrible abdominal pains. At that point I was totally depressed, nothing worked, and all of a sudden I thought about your site and you calling out Richard and I turned on my computer and read your refeed ebook front to back, same day I implemented it. Only two days later I felt tremendous, abdominal pains vanished, sex drive came back and my man boobs started shrinking. That last one really threw me for a loop and it proved to me that some hormones were in play. Anyway today I am about the same weight but feel ten times better, workout and have sex daily and have gained a lot of muscle. Believe it or not but before I found your site I visited the doctor/endo 3 times for thyroid/testosterone issues and they all said I was fine!! I felt like death warmed over and was fat but I guess still healthy enough for todays standards. It was seriously a huge eye opener to say the least. For going on 4 years I was completely convinced that I didnt need carbs to survive, all the while slowly deteriorating. The second day of the RRARF I realized I had orthorexia and was completely stressed out over eating. Its also funny reading all those former low carbers start to change their tune on potatoes, fruit and rice, wheat is still the devil though. :D I just searched through my photos and found these gems, first is from 2006, happy beginnings of paleo. Second is 2008, two years in and things are not great. Third is 2010, really unhappy and about to embark on VLC/carnivory. Shown from the side to highlight the second chin. Through this whole time I took paleo very seriously and tried to convert people, carbs are bad, blah blah. Now Im almost embarrassed looking back at that first pic. Low-Carb Lowers Metabolism Its no secret that reducing carbohydrates in your diet to an extreme level slows down the metabolism. It does this by lowering production and/or synthesis of the active thyroid hormone the one that REALLY counts, T3 triiodothyronine. I wont abuse it again, but Ive mentioned many times that even Dr. Atkins was aware of this, and stated outright that his diet tends to shut down thyroid function over time, which can be diagnosed by having a low body temperature. Low-carb author Rob Faigin also acknowledges this, stating, in Natural Hormonal Enhancement:

 T3 is a key regulator of metabolic rate, and that calorie restriction causes a decline in T3. Studies also show that diets that continuously restrict carbohydrate (like the Atkins diet, for instance) cause a reduction in T3, and that administering carbohydrate can restore T3 levels after they have declined. For this one simple claim, Faigin cites 10 separate studies. The key word in the above quote for Faigin would be continuously, meaning without periodic carbohydrate re-feeding. Anyway, you guys know this already, and many of you have first-hand negative experiences with prolonged carbohydrate restriction even after initially excellent results. I find it absolutely ridiculous, almost comical in fact, that the National Metabolism Society is a collective of people advocating severe carbohydrate restriction for the metabolism??!!! Or that Datis Kharrazian, hypothyroidism specialist, is all about carbohydrate restriction? Today, go check out this post by former zero carb carnivore Danny Roddy who ran his body temperature down to 95 degrees F on a diet that he was led to believe was the optimal human diet. The post is entitled, I Used to Think Matt Stone was a Douche, I was Wrong. Like many of you here, you probably once thought I was a douche as well, but later came to believe that my run around the internet and attack people antics were really sincere, and geared towards getting noticed, and more importantly remembered, by all the icey cold people out there following a low-carb or Paleo diet that really needed to hear the 180 message. In Dannys case, the arithmetic is as follows: 95.0 + 180 = 97.5 If you have a low body temperature, like many others, you have a very high likelihood of being able to overturn that and overcome health problems related to it by following the diet and lifestyle recommendations lined out in the free eBook on how to raise your metabolism accessible HERE. Dangers and Myths of Low Carb Diet Plans The world is drowning in low carb diet plans. Low carb fever has swept the nation, and perhaps the world. If anything, with #1 documentary films like Tom Naughtons Fat Head and groundbreaking books like Gary Taubess Good Calories, Bad Calories, the low carb diet has done nothing but gain steam since the days of Atkins. This, in part, is a beautiful thing. The low carb diet masters of the universe have indoctrinated the public with a totally different portrait of what causes obesity, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimers, and many other conditions. Thank God! That saturated fat causes heart disease thing was starting to get really old, especially after the whole saturated fat and cholesterol theory (the lipid hypothesis) was disproven decades ago. But is the low carb diet the answer to humanitys ills? Was Atkins really right about everything?

Not a chance! Carbohydrates cause obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?! Holy fat causes obesity, diabetes, and heart disease that is dumb. Tell that to all the lean people prior to the 20th century all over the world that were not overweight, did not have heart disease, and ate more carbohydrates with each meal (sedentary or active) than the typical low carb diet plans allow for the whole week. Or as I like to say: Fat kills? Carbs? What next, air? Low carb, low fat, low calorie, vegetarian although they seem very different, they have one thing in common. They are all wrong! More wrong than fornicating with a family member! The low carb diet myths run deep. It is a revolution based on the idea that carbohydrates raise blood sugar and insulin, and insulin makes you fat. High levels of blood sugar and insulin ARE the problem, but that is not caused, in any way, by the ingestion of carbohydrates. Fat chance. In fact, eating unrefined, wholesome, natural carbohydrates can lower blood glucose and insulin levels to normal. Renowned researcher Denis Burkitt noted this easily observable phenomenon: It is of interest that diets high in fiber-rich cereals and tuberous vegetables tend to result in an improvement in basal blood glucoses. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who is blinded by dietary dogma of his own (low fat vegetarian, dumb, dumb, dumb), at least gives a good critique of low carb diet myths in Eat to Live: So, it is certainly true as the advocates of animal-food-rich diets, such as Atkins, Heller, Sears, and other proclaim carbohydrates drive up insulin levels temporarily. These writers, however, have not presented the data in accurate fashion. A diet revolving around unrefined carbohydrates (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes) will not raise blood sugars or insulin levels. Studies have shown that such a diet can reduce fasting insulin levels 30-40 percent in just three weeks. Obviously, a low-fat diet that is high in refined sugars and refined carbohydrates and low in fiber is not a healthy diet. To lump refined and unrefined carbohydrates together is inaccurate and misleading. There are even some low carb diet dangers that dieters need to watch out for. Despite fantastic initial results on a low carb diet the low carb honeymoon period I call it, a diet too low in carbohydrates long-term can make you more insulin resistant, slow down your metabolism, raise cortisol levels, trash your digestion, wreak havoc on your emotions, and more. Low carb advocate Ron Rosedale thinks slowing down your metabolism for example is a good thing. Thats why I call him Wrong Rosedale. In fact, almost all of the low carb diet dangers stem from this basic phenomenon. A high metabolism is the human beings greatest protector from heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and infectious illness. A low metabolism is its greatest burden. Over the long haul, no matter what your metabolic type or condition may be, the low carb diet that is truly TOO low in carbs can be counterproductive, burying you in a low carb prison that is difficult to escape from.

To learn more, and find out why its moronic to declare war on any macronutrient, be it carbohydrates, fat, protein, or even calories, read through the 180 Starter Kit a free collection of materials that will help you to improve your health with a diet and lifestyle that is sustainable and one you can enjoy. Dont run from your dietary evils, conquer them. And for the love of God, dont diet Starch Lowers Insulin It is of interest that diets high in fibre-rich cereals and tuberous vegetables tend to result in an improvement in basal blood glucoses. Burkitt, Denis, Hugh Trowell, and Kenneth Heaton. Dietary Fibre, Fibre-Depleted Foods and Disease. Academic Press: London, 1985. It is a common belief that starch, or any type of carbohydrate particularly high-glycemic starches like potatoes, raises insulin. In the low-carb circles you see the idea floating around that carbohydrate ingestion raises glucose, which in turn raises insulin. Insulin increases fat storage, therefore carbohydrates make you fat and are the cause of the obesity epidemic. Gross oversimplifications that the human mind can easily grasp are always popular regardless of the what the oversimplifications are intended to explain. In the health sphere, they are prevalent. The carbs = insulin = fat myth is one of the greatest and most easily refutable. Its up there with the great fat = cholesterol = clogged arteries = heart attack theory that is simple, easy to follow, makes sense to those who dont study it, and is completely silly and a total misrepresentation of the etiology of heart disease. As always, it depends on context. In my program designed to, among other things, restore insulin sensitivity (which it has in every case Im aware of shown by increased glucose clearance out of the blood after eating), I do not say eat starch and you will live happily ever after. Instead, I say something like Eat plenty of food, dont overexert yourself physically or mentally, get plenty of sleep, eat only saturated fats and keep omega 6 polyunsaturated fat ingestion to a minimum, get sufficient but not excessive amounts of quality protein, and eat plenty of high-glycemic starch at every meal. This generally lowers the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, increases thyroid activity, improves glycogen storage, and starts shuttling glucose from ingested food into muscle cells where it creates muscle growth and the generation of heat and energy. This reduces insulin resistance. If you are insulin resistant and have high fasting insulin levels as a result of this insulin resistance, then insulin levels will fall dramatically on this program. For example, below is an email sent to me by someone who has followed 180DegreeHealth for over a year now. A traumatic childhood stress caused this person to suddenly become insulin resistant (as chronic stress hormone secretion is the primary root cause of insulin resistance) and gain something like 60 pounds in a year if I recall correctly from our email exchanges. She has had blood sugar regulation and thyroid problems ever since, which she tried to medicate with a low-carbohydrate diet to varying degress of restriction.

She has spent the last 4 years on a low-carbohdyrate diet, and her fasting insulin levels have varied between a VERY high 14 and 33 IU/m. But after just four months of loosely following my program to increase metabolism with special attention to eating high-starch and low-PUFA, her insulin has fallen all the way down to a perfect 4.7 IU/m. Her fasting glucose has fallen nearly in half to a level that probably scared the doc into thinking (mistakenly) that she was about to fall into a hypoglycemic coma (yet she no longer experiences high-adrenaline states indicative of crashing glucose levels like she did on a carbohydrate-restricted diet). If I am not mistaken she did not lose a single pound of body weight during this time, so any drop in insulin cannot be attributed to weight loss or calorie restriction. Her calorie intake has not dropped at all. Following the next two very important sentences is the email she sent me. If you are still under the influence of low-carb dogma, and believe that eating carbohdyrates will raise your insulin levels, snap out of it. In the right context, carbs are your best metabolic friend, and what passes as science and physiology in the low-carb realm is a complete scientific fairy tale Just got some labs back and thought Id share them with you. I am still low in iron, which is surprising to me considering I eat red meat, but I think the high RT3 and celiac disease all play a part in this. On the other hand I am quite pleased with my blood sugars and insulin levels. For reference here are my PRIOR glucose and insulin labs: October 2009: Glucose 90 (60-110) Insulin 17.9 (3-22) March 2010: Glucose: 87 (60-110) Insulin 14.6 (3-22) May 2010: Glucose random sampling: 97.2 (50-140) August 2010: Glucose 95 (60-110) Insulin: 33 (3-22) December 2010:

Glucose random sampling 94 (50-140) May 2011 (Four months of eating a high starch low PUFA diet about 250 carbs daily) Glucose: 49 (65-100) * Adiponectin: 2.3 (>2.7) Insulin: 4.7 (functional range <5.4 IU/m; normal lab range 3-22) Pro-insulin: <5 (<42) HBA1C: 5.9 (4-6)** HOMA-IR: 0.6 (<2.8) *** C-Peptide: 1.9 (<2.2) Leptin: 21(<20) **** *I have no idea why my glucose is so low. I did not feel even slightly hypoglycaemic. I generally feel fantastic in terms of hunger and cravings so am slightly puzzled. Still, if the test was performed using a normal lab range of 50-110; I would only be slightly under it. Still, I think a FBG of 49 is a HECK of a lot better than a FBG of 97! **Not quite sure why my HBA1C isnt in the optimal <5.4 range if glucose and insulin are so excellent. HBA1C is an average of blood sugars over a three month period though, so the HBA1C may be lagging behind in terms of including blood sugars from the first few months of RRARF when my blood sugars were a lot higher than they are now. *** My previous HOMA-IR was 4.1. HOMA-IR is a marker of insulin resistance and diabetes risk, so I was clearly extremely insulin resistant and now appear to have an extremely LOW level of insulin resistance. ***** I am leptin resistant obviously. Any cure/ideas for that? I have read that it is related to reverse T3, as reverse T3 makes the brain think it is starving and thus leptin resistance. Yet another reason I need to get T3 only. I will also be taking a herb that I read has reversed leptin resistance in some studies. I do have a lot of inflammation in my body (high CRP always and elevated liver enzymes at times), which I will be treating under the tutelage of a functional doc. Does inflammation contribute to leptin resistance?