1. Chimps do not eat meat.
I have absolutely no clue, as to why chimp diets have made their way into low carb conversations, but for the record, chimpanzees are omnivores. There was a time when it was thought that chimps had a similar diet to early hominids and other primates like orangutans and gorillas, who were/are herbivores, but that's not the case. Chimps basically eat whatever they can find and/or hunt. It's the classic "see food" diet, which is also followed by all hunter/gatherer humans.
But, this is a metabolism blog, not a primatology blog. Chimp diets are mostly irrelevant to what diet humans need to follow in civilization. Though chimps are our closest cousins, there are huge differences between us. Chimps don't have to worry about low carb. They are eating the food they adapted to, in their natural environment. It's modern humans that have to concentrate on their own diets, as they are the ones eating abnormal foods in an unnatural environment.
2. There is no root cause for metabolic "disease".
There is only one root cause for metabolic syndrome, aside from rare, genetic abnormalities, and that is - blood glucose dysregulation. Once blood glucose homeostasis is disrupted enough, pathology follows.
There are many things that contribute to the disruption of normal blood glucose regulation, for this reason there is no one cure for metabolic disease. A lifestyle approach is the best course of treatment.
3. There should be no hunger during fasting, regardless of its length.
There is a lot of nuance when it comes to hunger. In some cases it can be healthy and in others it is not. Hunger can mean that enough energy is being burned and so it needs more or that not enough energy is being burned so it needs more. It all depends on your hormonal state.
You should be able to go through a 16 - 18 hour fast with minimal to no discomfort. Most days you should experience no hunger, during such short fasts, but there will be days where you might have more hunger than usual. Respect your fasting times and pull through it. This hunger should occur less and less, as your circadian clock adjusts to your feeding/fasting routine. That’s why it’s so important to keep consistency, in your fasting regimen, so you can avoid hunger during fasts. Do not break your fast due to hunger, as these fasts are too short to require any intervention.
For longer fasts of 24 - 32 hours, it’s normal to have hunger. There are positive and negative causes for this hunger, depending on many things, as explained above.
The bottom line is, shorten your fasts to lengths that do not cause hunger. There are no metabolic benefits to going hungry. The only thing it will cause, in the long term, is metabolic slow down.
4. I am obese because I eat too much.
You are obese because of poor blood glucose regulation. Now the only question is what is poor blood glucose regulation and what causes it.
Poor blood glucose regulation is when there are large disparities between postprandial and fasting blood glucose levels, more than 40 points.
Many things can contribute to this including diet, improper exercise, medications, disruptions in circadian rhythms, certain hormonal states and age. "Eating too much" and eating too little also disrupts blood glucose regulation.
"Eating too much" is a complex interplay between biology and psychology and it manifests differently in everyone. You have to do the homework to figure out how it is manifesting in you, so you can work on resolving it. It's going to take much more than just a dietary intervention to address this, though diet should tackle the biological factors.
Determining just what "eating too much" even is, is a challenge in itself. Sometimes people think they are eating too much but they are instead not eating enough and vice versa. There is no one size fits all to how much you should be eating. You would have to calculate your individual macros, based on goals and current body fat, in order to have a baseline idea of just how much you should be eating and of what. I have a tutorial on how to determine your macros on the right side bar of the blog, under the label 'Quick Guides'.
5. Drinking LaCroix will not impede weight loss because it has no added sweeteners or chemicals.
There is obviously some flavor, in that "water", and it's most likely leaning towards sweetness. If it had no flavor, then Pellegrino or Perrier would do, not LaCroix, so regardless of what's in it, if you can taste it, it's triggering dopamine.
This is lethal for the obese. You do not want to taste anything that chronically stimulates dopamine, just like sugar does. This affects hypothalamic function and causes the storage of fat. On a low carb diet, this effect is quick, as fat is stored much more easily than carbohydrate, so you are giving your fat storage system steroids, every time you pick up a can of any "flavored drink". Do not drink flavored liquids.
On this blog, we advise you to drink water. If you want bubbly water, make sure it has no flavor, regardless of what they are labeled as, because that's irrelevant. It's the flavor that's making you fatter.
6. The head of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) says she was able to discontinue her prescribed insulin, for Type II diabetes, following a low carb diet. This mean that there is now "proof" these diets cure diabetes.
Oh boy. This is a very loaded topic and the response is very complex, so bare with me.
I know that this news has been circling around, low carb groups and pages, for awhile now, and it's really revving up the base. But, this only proves how ignorant mainstream low carb advocates are of what exactly diabetes is and how metabolism actually works. In this sense, they are similar to the ADA in their ignorance, but the ADA actually has better information, because they have an extensive research database that isn't as cherry picked and based on pseudoscience and anecdotal evidence as low carb's is.
First, diabetes is not a "disease" per say. It is best described as a metabolic adaptation to starvation that manifests as a syndrome. A syndrome is not one disease, but a cluster of associated symptoms or abnormalities that occur together. This is why not everyone manifests metabolic syndrome in the same way. Some become obese, some become diabetic, some develop fatty liver disease, some just have high blood pressure. Others drop dead of heart attacks and still others develop dementia.
As of this post, conventional medicine (based on the Cleveland Clinic) makes a diagnosis of diabetes, when one of the following occurs:
- Your blood sugar level is equal to or greater than 126 mg/dl (7 mmol/l).
- You have two random blood sugar tests over 200 mg/dl (11.1 mmol/l) with symptoms.
- You have an oral glucose tolerance test with results over 200 mg/dl (11.1 mmol/l).
This, dear readers, is just the tip of the iceberg. Diabetes is the end stage of metabolic syndrome. This means you have had metabolic abnormalities for decades, before you reach this stage. It also means that you haven't died from any complications caused by those metabolic abnormalities, so you have lived long enough to experience what is described as "diabetes".
It is completely normal and even expected for a diabetic to discontinue their prescribed insulin if they go low carb. This is a no brainer. The high blood glucose in diabetes is caused by excess glucose production coming from inside the body, which is then exacerbated by excess glucose coming from outside the body (diet). If you remove the glucose that comes from the diet, the exacerbation seizes and blood glucose lowers. It may lower enough to where there is no longer a need for exogenous insulin to lower it for you.
This does not mean that low carb cured your diabetes, since you have only addressed one half of the problem. You took away the exacerbatory effect, but you didn't take away the "disease". The excess glucose production coming from inside the body continues. The blood glucose disparities which caused the problem to begin with, persists. This is why these positive, initial effects, soon reverse and the person begins to see their blood glucose creep up, with time, and no amount of carb restriction works any longer. The person is basically hiding the most obvious symptom of the disease (high blood glucose), while it continues progressing right under their watch. This is why dietary solutions for "curing" diabetes are not generally accepted. We already knew, for a very long time, that carb restriction effects diabetes symptoms, but chasing symptoms does not cure the disease. Just like taking antacids does not cure acid reflux disease. Though it may seem like a miracle, at first, the condition is persisting. You simply masked the symptoms.
So, we can more accurately describe what the head of the ADA is doing by saying that she is addressing her diabetes symptoms, through a dietary intervention. From there she must adopt certain lifestyle changes in order to have a more effective and complete treatment. The wrong description is that she found the "cure for her diabetes". She did not. In order to be cured of diabetes you must obtain and sustain proper blood glucose regulation. This means the body does not over produce glucose when it's not needed, nor under produce it when it does. I can guarantee you, that she has not obtained that through low carb, or any dietary intervention, nor will she.
In order to obtain and sustain proper blood glucose regulation, she has to reverse her metabolic adaptation to starvation. That is very difficult to do and takes monumental effort that must include exercise, adequate protein and normalizing her circadian clocks (stress response). Even after addressing all that, she still has to maintain this effect through proper hormonal homeostasis which would allow her to burn and not spare body fat. Only then, can it be said that she is no longer diabetic. Until then, she might have dropped her insulin, but she probably will continue, or soon require, Metformin or Victoza, until the disease gets to the point to where insulin is once again needed.
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