Carbs, Inc., Etc.

Food as medicine. We already know it's a drug, but how about its ability to actually make us well? I myself am a sort of example of this, given the past 30 years and my present state of preservation. But for all that I'm unusual, I've never been anything like disciplined, let alone fanatical. I just don't want to eat meat. That's not a hardship. And it's worked out really well, given that I have 30 years of not having gooey putrefaction oozing sluggishly through my digestive tract, feeding and breeding toxic bacteria so I can absorb their waste products. But I've always had a sweet tooth, so there's not been a lot of real discipline. And still I have really good benefits. Imagine what might happen if we got it right?

Just got an email from my son. He's a very serious athlete, working toward world-class status. And he understands that diet is utterly pivotal. He's eating far fewer carbs -- by which we mean, mostly, grains. The math of his diet works out to 430 calories from carbs (almost all from fruits and vegetables) -- 22%; 500 from protein -- 28%; 970 from fat -- 50%. Total calories, 1900. Aprox.

That's A LOT of fat. A lot of protein too. And yet. And yet it's working very well. "All of my fats are derived from nuts, olive oil, coconut oil, avocados and occasionally flax or organic butter in smaller quantities. I don't count fish oil supplementation into my daily fat intake. If I drop my fat, I immediately feel it and am hungry. I find it impossible to eat any more carbs unless I eat a lot of fruit." Don't you wish you had that problem?

"I've been doing it for 3 weeks and have leaned out more, increased my output and my heart rate has steadily dropped. I weigh in consistently at about 183 but am as strong (actually stronger) as I was at 203. I have very strong mental clarity and focus."

I wake up feeling like I've slept in a cement mixer. Sometimes I can think about a single topic for as long as 15 consecutive seconds.

"I think post-workout nutrition is way overlooked in terms of recovery. When my PW nutrition is solid, I never get sore. My PW meal doesn't count towards my day blocks."

See? It's rational. It's purposeful. And most of all, it's effective. The way doctors fiddle with a patient's medication dosages? The same thing is possible with food. It's just a matter of being methodical. Problem is, nothing is as emotional as food. Might as well tell an addict to be methodical with his heroin injections. They're not called dope fiends for nothing. They are still called dope fiends, right? Donut fiends.

"Right now I have one cheat meal a week on Thursday nights. I have everything dialed in so specifically it's ridiculous; but it's so easy now -- second nature. After I eat my one little cheat meal my veins stick out like crazy. Also, since I don't binge on my cheat meals anymore, I don't have a noticeable increase in morning heart rate or the bodyweight fluctuations anymore."

Veins sticking out is a sign of metabolic stress. Why would eating stress you that much? Imbalance, of course, but I don't know much about this. I'll ask my son.

He mentions a supplement called Resveretrol, and I don't know much about that either, so I asked. It "activates the same genes that calorie restriction does [which increases longevity], only without the calorie restriction. It's taken from stressed grapes that fight off molds and fungus. In eating the stressed grape skins, we activate the genes that are responsible for survival, mimicking the benefits of calorie restriction." Could be. I haven't seen the data. I do know that calorie restriction is the only proven method of vastly increasing vital longevity. There must be genes responsible for that.

Here's the things. Animal proteins are sort of poisonous. If there is such a thing as auto-immune disease, animal products are a major factor. And they are very hard to digest -- like using your gas just to make your motor hot, rather than make it go. Indeed, we do not need protein at all. We need amino acids, the building blocks of protein. We don't need them just to make tissues -- we need them as peptides, as hormones, as neurotransmitters. If we could get that ratio right, well, it would be ideal, the way right things are ideal.

Same with carbs. All carbs break down into glucose. That's a lot of eating, just for the sugar. A lot of health problems, too. It's not the carbs. That's the wrong emphasis. It's the phytonutrients, the chemicals in plants that do all that protecting against mold and bugs and viruses and, uh, cosmic rays. Get those in the right amount, and you will be sure to get all the carbs, the glucose that you need.

Same with fats. Fats are just calories, which is just heat. Heat is, usually, the enemy of an engine. It's not about the calories. Calories are not a problem in our society -- not too few calories, anyway. It's the kind of fat. Point is, there are essential fatty acids from which your body makes hormones. If we get too much of one sort of fat, we get too much of certain kinds of hormones. We get too much omega 6 -- substrate of the inflammatory hormones. So use no vegetable oils unless you think inflammation is a really good thing for you, and use much much more omega 3 -- because anti-inflammatory hormones make you feel so good.

See? We've been propagandized, or at least miseducated, into thinking in terms of proteins and carbs and fat, when it should be amino acids and phytonutrients and omega 3. We think about calories instead of nutrients. If we think of nutrients at all, it's only as vitamins and minerals -- the stuff you can get in superscientifical formulas from the futuristic Atomic Age of the ultra modern Nineteen Fifties, when nutrition was invented and all our food was pills!

It just seems a bit unthoughtful, though, doesn't it? It does to me. Think of it this way. Almost all of the nutrients that a cow eats are not available to you by eating its flesh. Yes, some of the vitamins and probably more of the minerals are transferred to you through the bloodburger, but all, all, all of the phytonutrients have been used up, burned up, by the cow to make its own flesh. Nothing left for you but the flesh, and you can't build out of ashes, if you get my point.

So that's what I wanted to share. Three weeks is not a long time, so my son's experiment is in the very early stages. My own experiment has lasted three decades, and I can speak with authority.

You should listen.


J