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January 17, 2006
Livin' La Vida Low Carb
I checked out Livin' La Vida Low Carb after I read about his entry on Luigi Fontana's study over on the CR list. Jimmy mentions a few common misconceptions about CR, but overall, I love his blog.
Lots of entertaining commentary on low carb living, diet books, the gak that one is confronted with in ordinary life (check out the entry on Girl Scout Cookies!) The fact is, most people could benefit a whole lot from cutting their carbs. My standard diet advice for those who just want to lose weight is a) cut out grains b) up your protein to above 70 grams per day c) stop eating stuff with sugar in it (sodas, candy, etc.) That's all most people neeed to lose quite a bit of weight without hunger, dieting, etc. I do get concerned about people who eat giant amounts of saturated fat (four eggs for breakfast?!! Yikes! Eggwhites? Try them and you'll like them!) But cutting carbs is a good way to lose weight, and it's quite possible to do a low carb diet without massive amounts of saturated fat.
It sounds like Jimmy's main interest is in losing weight and maintaining weight loss. For him, the lifestyle of pushing calories lower and tracking calories isn't appealing. That would be true for most people, and it's important to understand that CR isn't a lifestyle for those who are just interested in losing weight. If I wanted to just be thin, I wouldn't bother weighing and measuring my food, tracking my calories, or monitoring my nutrition every day (though I would occasionally check in with the software to make sure no hidden deficiencies had arisen.) I'd just keep up with my high protein, low carb breakfasts, my flax oil, my calcium-rich nonfat dairy, and eating lots of veggies (hello kale!) But for those of us who pursue CR, we either never cared about weight loss (many of us started at a normal weight) or we stopped worrying about our weight many pounds ago. We're in it for life-extension, not just for health improvements that you can get from obesity avoidance. Now don't get me wrong... I'm all for obesity avoidance. If even half the American population were to get their weight down to even the top of the height and weight chart numbers, the world would be a much better place. There might not be a nursing shortage cause there would be a whole lot fewer people in the hospital with heart attacks, strokes, and complications from diabetes.
But for those of us who do CR, especially the hardcore among us, an unusual level of self-discipline is assumed. Our priorities are different from people who just want to lose weight and keep it off. We're willing to put more effort into our diets, nutrition, and even occasionally feeling hungry, because our goal is staying younger longer. It would be silly for someone who was just interested in losing weight to keep up my current lifestlye... it's just much easier to lose weight than to push your calories well below the level where you're thin! But alas, the biggest benefits from CR appear to come at the lower calorie levels. It's a sliding scale -- any reduction of calories (without compromising nutrition) will improve health. But the more the better.
For those whose main goal is weight loss, I think the low carbers have a lot of good advice. Low fat diets can work for weight loss, especially if the dieter is transitioning from a high fat, fast food diet. But as Jimmy says, "Hunger, irritability, deprivation, cravings, and more will overcome you and bring you to your knees begging for the pain to go away (can you tell I was suffering on my low-fat, high-carb diet?!)"
I was a lowfat vegan for years, and I felt like I ate all the time! I was thin... between 110 and 115 most of the time... but I was anxious, hungry (hence the constant eating), had insane sugar cravings, and lacked the mental focus I have now. Eating enough protein (okay maybe more than enough) and a decent amount of unsaturated fat has totally changed my life, not just my diet. It was easy to lose weight once I made those changes, and maintaining takes no effort whatsoever. My first changes on CR were cutting out bread and pasta, cutting all drinks except for red wine, and ceasing to put sugar in my coffee. Now, I rarely leave the house without 29 grams of eggwhite power protein in my body. And it has made all the difference.
However, I'm interested in the life-extending benefits of CR. Therefore, I am willing to put more effort into my daily diet and nutrition, plan my exercise carefully, and hang out with strange, geeky people in pursuit of this goal. It's a question of priorities. If your priority is getting thin and staying thin, cutting out unnecessary, nutrient-less carbs and upping your protein and unsaturated fats will probably get you there. If you're interested in looking forty at seventy, you'd better look into CR.
I mean, if you're interested in living to see the dawn of radical age-reversing biomedicine. But really, if you're going to be there, shouldn't you look fabulous?
Posted by april at January 17, 2006 6:54 AM