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 doesn’t 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.”


I’ve 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 doesn’t 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. I’m not saying that it’s not dangerous to eat fast food daily and sit around completely immobile on the couch for 30 years. I’m not saying that it can’t 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 it’s 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 it’s 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 Korg's 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 you’re busy and probably get tons of email requests but I figure it’s worth a shot to see if you can help me with the direction of my diet. Here’s 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 Cordain’s 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 couldn’t 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 couldn’t stomach all those nuts and veggies. That’s about the time I read your site and started reading other sites who advocated high carbs, this to me was insane-sounding. Anyway I didn’t 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 today’s standards.

It was seriously a huge eye opener to say the least. For going on 4 years I was completely convinced that I didn’t 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. It’s 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 I’m almost embarrassed looking back at that first pic."

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 – he’s 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 – he’s really on track with a lot of stuff.

But it’s 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. Don’t even get me started on that. Well, okay I guess I guess I should take a closer look at that bold statement. That’s what this post is all about…

Yes, you heard that right. In Mark Sisson’s 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 I’ve ever read on nutrition and health, this could very well be the dumbest and most unsubstantiated tidbit I’ve 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 couldn’t 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 I’ve even eaten a MEAL with fewer than 150 grams of carbohydrates. I’ve got at least 150 grams of carbs in me by 9am each day, and often 400 grams or more by noon.

Okay, that’s 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 it’s 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 McDonald’s today can at least reproduce. The same can’t be said about supermodels or say, female distance runners – most of which cannot reproduce. At the very least, seeing someone’s abs because there isn’t 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 McDonald’s 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 Sisson’s 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 – that’s 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 people’s 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 carbohydrate-based diet is vastly superior for health, longevity, and human performance – athletic or otherwise. By carbohydrate-based I don’t 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, I’m 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 Sisson’s 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 this FREE EBOOK on how to recover your metabolism from prolonged restricted dieting of any kind.

Natural Testosterone Enhancement

We’ve been talking about women’s hormones a lot lately, but there are certainly many parallels between progesterone (the primary female hormone to try to maximize) and testosterone in men. In men, when the metabolism is low, testosterone levels fall.

This all makes perfect sense of course. With a low metabolism you have low energy for exercise, trouble building muscle or maintaining lean muscle mass, less speed, strength, and athletic performance, and typically less energy to divert to sexual desire. This all parallels with testosterone levels, which rise and fall with your overall metabolic rate.

To raise testosterone levels, it requires a pro-thyroid and anti-stress hormone diet and lifestyle. Lots of food with an emphasis on carbohydrates, anabolic-type exercise (sprints, weightlifting), lots of sleep, avoidance of catabolic exercise (endurance, “cardio”), and so forth are all important factors. Of course, any chronic psychosocial trauma or distress, chronic infection, or countless other stressors can blunt testosterone production, but the basics can usually get you at least some results.

To exemplify how this all works with a real person in the real world, we will make fun of Martin, the Belgian Jackhammer we’ll call him (explained later). Martin and I are always in close contact as we have virtually identical responses to various weird diets down to very exact and peculiar physiological responses – like dribbling piss all over ourselves if we eat too much saturated fat in one sitting, or developing chest pain after an extended period of time on a low-carb diet.

Martin spent a year or so on a zero carb diet. Without carbohydrates, the body has an extremely hard time converting thyroid hormones into the active thyroid hormone T3 (not referencing a Schwarzeneggar film here). Metabolism plummets, especially after the initial honeymoon period when the adrenals are still temporarily strong enough to prop up the metabolic rate, and testosterone falls with it.

Of course, in the Zero Carb religion of Skeletor (Charles Washington), carbohydrates are the devil that make you fat, make you a wimp that would have been conquered by a more carnivorous tribe back in the day, raise your triglycerides, raise your “bad cholesterol” (LDL), lower your “good cholesterol” (HDL), raise your uric acid levels, raise your blood sugar, and predispose you to heart disease in every way imaginable if you even live long enough to see your blood test results after ingesting carbotoxin.

Sigh.

Well, with real people in the real world eating carbohydrates as part of an overall comprehensive health program designed to get to the root of why people are metabolizing food incorrectly, that’s simply not what happens.

Martin made the transition from Zero Carb to a 180-style way of life starting a little over a year ago. It was not an easy transition. The kid’s wiener was covered with yeast with a severe candida bloom, and he had some other transitional issues as well, like gluten intolerance (I know I know, a Belgian that can’t eat waffles. It’s totally f’ed up). But he powered through it.

The result was an increase in muscle mass and decrease in body fat, disappearance of candida, and some other positives including enhanced glucose clearance – all signs of improved insulin sensitivity, and a few other improvements such as an increase in sex drive.

Normally any fool could see clearly that testosterone levels had risen with this new strategy. But we don’t have to speculate in Martin’s case. Martin’s total testosterone level a year ago was 325. Now it is 715, a 120% INCREASE IN ONLY ONE YEAR. Not all cases will be this simple, but many will be. Eat the food (ETF), raise your testosterone.

As you can see from what he wrote to me, his orthorexic health fanaticism has really gone wild! He has no fun at all and stays at home eating nothing but the healthiest gluten-free foods he can find to obtain those impressive results…

“I've just had the results of a blood test I had done two weeks ago, and I think you might be interested in the results. I usually eat a lot of pasta, bread and potatoes, 200g of lean meat and olive oil and coconut oil as main fats (around 20-25% fat as calories). Oh and keep in mind that I had drunk like crazy two 2 days before with my cousin and we literally stuffed ourselves on lasagna (I ate half a loaf of bread and 800g lasagna) with crisps and of course tons of beer lol. I was even afraid to still be drunk 48hours later. And of course the mandatory kebab at 6am, no party is a true success without it :-D !”

After this heavy carb and alcohol binge came Martin’s blood tests. His triglycerides were at an extremely high and dangerous level just like the low-carb prophecy…

Triglycerides – 73

His cholesterol numbers are even more horrifying!!! His total cholesterol dropped from 220 to 148 and his HDL actually rose during that 72 point drop.

Total cholesterol - 148


HDL - 58


LDL - 75

For your interest, here is his exact testosterone panel…

Total testosterone: 715 (200-800)
sex hormone binding globulin: 0.8 (0.3 - 1.5)
free testosterone: 17.8 (5 - 20)
free testosterone index 89 (15 - 100)
bioavailable testosterione 416 (100-425)

Now this may come as a real shocker, but believe it or not his uric acid levels were too high eating an all-meat diet!!! I know it’s crazy. Strangely, researchers report that the grass becomes wet in Belgium when it rains and that the sun sets in the West. Peculiar indeed. Anyway, you can see he’s well onto developing gout now!

Uric acid: 5.7 (it was above 7.2 on ZC)

Back when I was under the influence of low-carbism, my friend Scott had a history of gout, and had a mild heart attack at around the age of 60. I told him basically that all the healthy food in the world wasn’t going to save him, and that he must “take action to bring his insulin under control.” He cut his carbs and developed a severe gout reoccurrence within weeks. Way to go coach Matt! Fortunately I’m not as dumb as I used to be.

Anyway, back to the Belgian Jackhammer…

All these carbs have made him a raging diabetic too.

Fasting blood glucose – 87

Another good paradox is that his iron levels are high on a diet very high in phytic acid, as one of his top sources of calories is whole wheat pasta. It is not “good” to have high iron levels by any stretch, but eating a lot of phytic acid hasn’t made his teeth fall out or left him with iron deficiency anemia by any stretch. The phytic acid content of foods can probably be filed deep into a large pile of alternative nutrition soapbox minutiae. Phytic acid may even have benefits that outweigh the drawbacks, such as anti-cancer and anti-diabetic properties. Most people’s time and energy is probably not well-spent doing a lot of soaking and fermenting at home to remove phytic acid.

It’s also of interest that Martin’s blood clotting factors – fibrinogen and thrombocytes are low. This is obviously a great protector against heart attack (coronary thrombosis) and probably hints at low inflammation levels in general (thromboxanes for example are Arachidonic acid-derived, and getting levels on the low-side is one of the reasons for eating a low-PUFA diet).

This is of course just one example and one person, and a young male at that. It’s not like every person can expect these results. But I had to put it up because it is the perfect embodiment of the broader objectives at 180DegreeHealth. Relax, stop obsessing over the perfect diet, never restrict carbohydrates or calories or anything to any severe degree, live your life and have fun – and get great results all across the board from physique enhancement to fewer food intolerances to improved blood tests indicative of raised thyroid output (such as dramatic LDL lowering with dramatic testosterone increase).

The only downer is the complaints coming from Martin’s girlfriend. She has noticed a dramatic increase in pain, inflammation, and soreness in the midsection and is walking funny. Testosterone hurts. The Belgian Jackhammer strikes again!!!

(Sorry, but I have to keep Martin entertained. We’ve exchanged enough emails about our junk that I feel obligated to give him a high testosterone nickname, or dickname as it were).

More coming up soon on building muscle, how I built 15 or so pounds of lean muscle in 3 months when I’ve never been able to get results like that ever before in my life, and how an increase in testosterone factors in to all of it.

If you are a male suffering from low testorone levels, following the simple dietary and lifestyle guildelines lined out in THIS FREE EBOOK will very likely get you somewhere between a little and a lot of improvement.