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ok, here's a pretty serious question for all of you who follow this primal/paleo/whole9 etc and live with a partner/spouse who doesn't eat the same way.

i've just started my Primal Blueprint diet, and now my girlfriend who i've been living with since november last year (5 months) is not happy about my new lifestyle choice. not happy at all
so while last week i had sporadically skipping any grain based dinners, after this weekend i'm tyring to go 100% grain free. now she's super worried that this will put a serious test to our relationship because we won't eat dinner together anymore. this all happend last night... i stayed calm and just explained to her that we can still dine together most of the time! meat/fish/chicken plus any vegatable, and she can have her pasta/rice or whatever. but she's worried about not eating pizza together, chinese take out, pasta dishes she likes to make for us and stuff like that.
how can i best deal with this? she told me that she's really hoping i'll give up in a few weeks...

Try paleo dating; If your current lady isn't down with the program just club a new one and drag her home instead.

ok, here's a pretty serious question for all of you who follow this primal/paleo/whole9 etc and live with a partner/spouse who doesn't eat the same way.

i've just started my Primal Blueprint diet, and now my girlfriend who i've been living with since november last year (5 months) is not happy about my new lifestyle choice. not happy at all
so while last week i had sporadically skipping any grain based dinners, after this weekend i'm tyring to go 100% grain free. now she's super worried that this will put a serious test to our relationship because we won't eat dinner together anymore. this all happend last night... i stayed calm and just explained to her that we can still dine together most of the time! meat/fish/chicken plus any vegatable, and she can have her pasta/rice or whatever. but she's worried about not eating pizza together, chinese take out, pasta dishes she likes to make for us and stuff like that.
how can i best deal with this? she told me that she's really hoping i'll give up in a few weeks...

I agree with the others that it isn't a great sign for the relationship, but anyway, my wife has been well ahead of me with the diet stuff and we have had this issue a little bit at times. It worked out fine though as basically she would sometimes cook a paleo meal, I would eat it cuz hell yeah free yummy food brought to me. If I cooked something non healthy she would just do her own thing. We go out to eat a lot and she usually finds something healthy to eat at most places (obv you can't just go to a greasy pizza place but most places are not that hard really). It takes a little communication and compromise to pick places to go but its far from the overdramatic "we won't eat dinner together anymore".

thanks guys, really appreciate your feedback.
well all except nawhead's and bazman's advice made me laugh though

get her on a special version of the primal diet, give her your meat and two veg every night

@mitch - Theorize however you'd like. I eat this way and it works. If you're looking to read, I'll give you a few bones: Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Good Calories - Bad Calories, Speth [1991, p. 265]. It's clear that human bodies can adapt to any diet; it makes the best out of whatever it's given. Ever heard of the Twinkie Diet? The guy (a nutrition professor) lost substantial weight, improved his cholesterol, and his triglyceride levels dropped. To say the least, I'm highly skeptical of the modern view of nutrition.

I just finished reading Taubes' Why We Get Fat (it's the Reader's Digest version of Good Calories, Bad Calories) and Oh.. Mai... Gawd... i was blind, and now i see. or more accurately, i/we/us were told a bunch of stuff that wasn't true, and we've been on a (ed: another) bad government experiment for the last 30 years.

And from this interview of Dr. Mark Haub talking about his twinkie diet, it seems pretty clear that his diet was more in line with a low carb diet than the traditional "healthy diet," thus the reason for the weight loss. the takeaway from his crazy experiment is that if you cut carbs, no matter how you do it, fat comes off.

Tom Naughton did a similar experiment, but on a fast food diet high in fat and protein but low in carbs for 28 days, and achieved the same thing. then he made the movie Fat Head (skip to 50min for the science of fat, the first half is hit and miss and not that relevant imo).

the takeaway from his crazy experiment is that if you cut carbs, no matter how you do it, fat comes off.

The question is whether that's good for you. Maybe you need to lose a few, but having done that, should you continue? You lose fat on low/no carb diets because your body burns the stored fat for energy. If you stay basically in the state of energy starvation, ketosis happens. Some say that it is fine to be in a state of ketosis, but I'm not sure I buy that since it's a body response to a dangerous situation. What happens when there's not enough fat left? Is it hard on your liver to be in ketosis a lot?
Maybe the Paleo diet is still great, I haven't done enough reading to have an opinion on any diet really. I've read that lots of red meat hardens arteries, I don't know whether the Paleo diet can be eaten without a lot of red meat.

I've been doing some reading myself because I remain skeptical that there's any right diet. It seems for the most part, there's no way to accurately judge a diet because there are other factors to health than what one is eating. I asked a doctor friend of mine who read a study on the paleo diet in which the people on the diet were told to exercise at least a half hour every day and the people on the standard diet weren't told to exercise at all. Then there's environmental factors, and lifestyle factors. We've got a thread on vit. D, which one gets from sunshine. Those who don't get enough sun don't get enough vit. D no matter what diet they're on, and they suffer the repercussions.

If you stay basically in the state of energy starvation, ketosis happens. Some say that it is fine to be in a state of ketosis, but I'm not sure I buy that since it's a body response to a dangerous situation. What happens when there's not enough fat left? Is it hard on your liver to be in ketosis a lot?

we go into ketosis every day. it's called sleeping.

and the studies done on traditional Inuit showed they had no problem eating a 90% meat diet (with some seasonal fruit) their whole lives. but the thing is, we can't replicate this diet easily in the modern world. the Inuit ate all the internal organs and the fattest parts of their kill, "snout to tail" carnivorism. we only eat lean muscle meat now. it's funny, but in the wild, predators eat all the fat and leave the lean muscle for scavengers. someone going full carnivore today has to add fat and liver and brain and whatever else we don't even think of as proper food anymore. supplementation is necessary i think (esp Vit-D), in any modern diet.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson demonstrated how this is possible after having studied the Inuit.

Definitely pick up "Why We Get Fat" if you have the chance. what's on your reading list btw?

we go into ketosis every day. it's called sleeping.

When we're sleeping, we're also not doing anything. And we stop sleeping. We get surges of adrenaline from time to time as well, but that doesn't mean it would be good to have adrenaline pumping through our bodies all the time.

and the studies done on traditional Inuit showed they had no problem eating a 90% meat diet (with some seasonal fruit) their whole lives. but the thing is, we can't replicate this diet easily in the modern world. the Inuit ate all the internal organs and the fattest parts of their kill, "snout to tail" carnivorism. we only eat lean muscle meat now. it's funny, but in the wild, predators eat all the fat and leave the lean muscle for scavengers. someone going full carnivore today has to add fat and liver and brain and whatever else we don't even think of as proper food anymore. supplementation is necessary i think (esp Vit-D), in any modern diet.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson demonstrated how this is possible after having studied the Inuit.

Thanks for the link. Thing is though, none of us live the traditional Inuit life. We don't eat raw brain. I don't think it's part of the Paleo diet either, but I could be wrong. Also, the article doesn't say what the avg lifespan of Inuit living in this traditional manner is or what other health effects like heart disease and hardened artieries, etc. they might be more susceptible to.
Even in this article, there's a lot of back and forth about health benefits and risks with low carb diets. There are studies mentioned where people's physical performance were impaired, and there are studies where heart disease is lessened on low carbs and the plaque build up in blood vessels impaired vascular health.
Not to mention the part about competitive athletes wanting to stay away from low carb diets.
It's important to note the studies aren't really comprehensively explained. Even in citation, information about how the study was conducted is often missing. You get an interpretation of the findings that may or may not have an interest in fully examining the study.

Definitely pick up "Why We Get Fat" if you have the chance. what's on your reading list btw?

Right now, mainly articles on the internet. I have a few friends who are doctors and I ask them about it. I'm not ready to buy any books yet, mostly because my diet is not #1 on my priority list and I'm not in bad shape.
I don't have a real opinion on whether any diet is good or not because I don't have enough information, I just thought people seem to be getting a bit carried away. I always look for the holes, and the explanations that follow. If they make sense, I'll go along. I need the convincing first.

the takeaway from his crazy experiment is that if you cut carbs, no matter how you do it, fat comes off.

Are you saying that even if I'm eating more calories than I'm burning, as long as I cut carbs I will still lose weight? Or are you making the assumption I'm eating less calories than I'm burning?

@Steppin Razor

When we're sleeping, we're also not doing anything. And we stop sleeping. We get surges of adrenaline from time to time as well, but that doesn't mean it would be good to have adrenaline pumping through our bodies all the time.

that's true, but we wouldn't be in ketosis 24 hours a day on a no carb diet. we're obviously taking in new food every few hours, so we use that for energy and store the excess for later use. but once that fuel's used up, we go back into ketosis. that's how ketosis is supposed to work. it's not a crisis state.

i guess i mispoke when i said we all go into ketosis during sleep. we SHOULD go into ketosis during sleep or when we haven't had something to eat after a few hours. there's a problem when we're on high carb diets though. our bodies stop going into ketosis much at all (in Why We Get Fat, we see studies done with mice who die of starvation while still very fat). we go to sleep for 8 hours and we wake up crazed with hunger. or we don't eat for 4 hours and we can't think anymore, we're grouchy, famished like we've been walking across a desert, etc. that's because the body is not using its fat stores for energy. it's just starving and holding out for more sugar.

anecdotally, i experienced this all the time. then i tried paleo and now my body switches to ketosis very seamlessly now (i saw this after just 1 week). i don't wake up with a growling belly. i don't get light headed and super weak if i haven't had something to eat in 4, 6, 12, 20 hours. i may move a little slower, everything just sorta slows down just a bit, kind of like you're meditating without consciously trying, but i still feel level mentally.

I don't have a real opinion on whether any diet is good or not because I don't have enough information, I just thought people seem to be getting a bit carried away. I always look for the holes, and the explanations that follow. If they make sense, I'll go along. I need the convincing first.

Here's a live presentation by Tom Naughton, the director of of Fat Head, going through the fat science of the last 30 years.

@ PokerWannabe

Are you saying that even if I'm eating more calories than I'm burning, as long as I cut carbs I will still lose weight? Or are you making the assumption I'm eating less calories than I'm burning?

the new science (or old working science before bad science came along in the 70's) says carbs turn into fat. that's it. calories have nothing to do with it. fat has nothing to do with it. if you cut carbs from what you currently consume, hopefully to below 100 grams a day, regardless of any other factors, you will lose fat.

(or if you're already skinny like me, regain control of your blood sugar levels and reduce your risk of becoming diabetic in middle age.)

even if you don't exercise. even if your diet is 50% fat. even if you eat nothing but twinkies.

the bad science from the 70's came up with the theory that:

fat = calories in - calories out

but this theory has been proven wrong again and again. the problem is, the (my) government isn't in the business of admitting mistakes in policy, so it stays, regardless of evidence of rising obesity, diabetes, and heart disease on our diet of low fat, calorie conscious, whole wheat bread with low fat vegetable spread.

we go into ketosis every day. it's called sleeping.

and the studies done on traditional Inuit showed they had no problem eating a 90% meat diet (with some seasonal fruit) their whole lives. but the thing is, we can't replicate this diet easily in the modern world. the Inuit ate all the internal organs and the fattest parts of their kill, "snout to tail" carnivorism. we only eat lean muscle meat now. it's funny, but in the wild, predators eat all the fat and leave the lean muscle for scavengers. someone going full carnivore today has to add fat and liver and brain and whatever else we don't even think of as proper food anymore. supplementation is necessary i think (esp Vit-D), in any modern diet.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson demonstrated how this is possible after having studied the Inuit.

Definitely pick up "Why We Get Fat" if you have the chance. what's on your reading list btw?

I read that the inuit diet suggests to eat 1 part fat for every 4-5 parts meat, iirc.

@Steppin Razor

that's true, but we wouldn't be in ketosis 24 hours a day on a no carb diet. we're obviously taking in new food every few hours, so we use that for energy and store the excess for later use. but once that fuel's used up, we go back into ketosis. that's how ketosis is supposed to work. it's not a crisis state.

It's not a crisis state, but it occurs when primary and secondary energy sources are depleted. It doesn't seem right to perpetually be lacking energy sources.

i guess i mispoke when i said we all go into ketosis during sleep. we SHOULD go into ketosis during sleep or when we haven't had something to eat after a few hours. there's a problem when we're on high carb diets though. our bodies stop going into ketosis much at all (in Why We Get Fat, we see studies done with mice who die of starvation while still very fat). we go to sleep for 8 hours and we wake up crazed with hunger. or we don't eat for 4 hours and we can't think anymore, we're grouchy, famished like we've been walking across a desert, etc. that's because the body is not using its fat stores for energy. it's just starving and holding out for more sugar.

Presumably the body stops going into ketosis because there is ample glycogen stores, which the body uses. Although I don't understand why the body would not use fat stores for energy if after 4 hrs you're out of energy and glycogen.
Ultimately, should we be using fat stores for energy? It seems the answer would be yes if you have too much fat already stored, but I don't see how the answer should be yes if you don't. If you don't take in a lot of excess protein, carbs, or fat, then you shouldn't need to burn fat stores because you don't have much.

anecdotally, i experienced this all the time. then i tried paleo and now my body switches to ketosis very seamlessly now (i saw this after just 1 week). i don't wake up with a growling belly. i don't get light headed and super weak if i haven't had something to eat in 4, 6, 12, 20 hours. i may move a little slower, everything just sorta slows down just a bit, kind of like you're meditating without consciously trying, but i still feel level mentally.

I can't relate, because I don't wake up hungry no matter what I ate the night before.

Here's a live presentation by Tom Naughton, the director of of Fat Head, going through the fat science of the last 30 years.

Not sure if that's the one you meant to post, it's a talk about studies. Which I agree are often skewed. The only thing I think he skipped over is that clinical studies can be just as manipulated as observational studies.

It's not a crisis state, but it occurs when primary and secondary energy sources are depleted. It doesn't seem right to perpetually be lacking energy sources.

Presumably the body stops going into ketosis because there is ample glycogen stores, which the body uses. Although I don't understand why the body would not use fat stores for energy if after 4 hrs you're out of energy and glycogen.
Ultimately, should we be using fat stores for energy? It seems the answer would be yes if you have too much fat already stored, but I don't see how the answer should be yes if you don't. If you don't take in a lot of excess protein, carbs, or fat, then you shouldn't need to burn fat stores because you don't have much.

it makes more sense if you think of our fat stores as just rechargeable batteries rather than emergency rations locked up in the basement.

and our body can convert fat into glycogen for the brain, it's called gluconeogenesis. but the brain also uses ketone bodies for energy. there's some debate about which is the preferred fuel for the brain. basically if we go no carb, our brain starts using more ketone bodies rather than glycogen.

whether the brain runs more efficiently on ketone bodies or glycogen is similar to the ketosis debate.

but the general idea is that going into ketosis or using ketone bodies is what the body does when there's not a lot of sugar in our system.

so let's get into sugar. carbs put a wrench in our system. carbs are easily converted energy, but all that means is it turns into sugar in the blood. too much sugar in the blood is toxic, thus insulin works to get rid of it by storing the excess sugar in muscles and fat.

in fact, insulin is actually an emergency horomone. if you have high blood sugar, you die within a few days. we've got it backwards i think. ketosis is normal, insulin response is abnormal. there isn't a lot of simple carbs in the natural world that floods your system with sugar. this is where Glycemic Index comes in. GI of meat is 0. raw vegetables and fruit are less than 50. honey is 55. the GI of table sugar is 64. wheat bread is 70. baked potato is 80.

so honey is like a goldmine in nature. it's an amazing flood of energy. but it's like nature's crack. crack gives us energy, but we wouldn't want it everyday. well, we may want it everyday but it's not good for us if taken daily is my point.

when you eat bread or potatoes, you're basically eating sugar, the body doesn't care what form it goes in your mouth, only how it breaks it down into.

when there's constantly sugar in our system, we always have insulin in our system, thus we're always storing fat and not using fat. somehow this constant abnormal state of high insulin levels creates abnormal locked fat.

but for those people who are skinny despite eating, or for kids, it's because the body is efficient at clearing the blood sugar. but as we grow older, the muscles get insulin resistent and the insulin doesn't work very well anymore, so we have to store more and more fat.



but i suppose the real crux is why this state of heightened insulin response in your system creates excess fat. insulin is trying to protect you. we can have protein and fat floating around our blood all the time. but not sugar. again, sugar is rare in the natural world.

Not sure if that's the one you meant to post, it's a talk about studies. Which I agree are often skewed. The only thing I think he skipped over is that clinical studies can be just as manipulated as observational studies.

well there's 5 parts to the talk:
Big Fat Fiasco pt. 1
Big Fat Fiasco pt. 2
Big Fat Fiasco pt. 3
Big Fat Fiasco pt. 4
Big Fat Fiasco pt. 5

[sorry for the double post, i was editing that above post and ran out of time. for clarity, i was about to delete that last dangling paragraph about protein and fat in the blood. that's just my assumption. and i have a tendency to use a lot of "you's" and "your's," and i was trying to edit so it doesn't seem like i'm trying to attack anybody. ]

if you don't want to watch all the videos (it is a pretty long talk), just watch parts 4 and 5 for the stuff about carbs and calories in - calories out. the revelant section starts @ 2:30 in part 4.

um, here you go:
Bog Fat Fiasco Part 4 @ 2:30
Big Fat Fiasco pt. 5