Are you really such a Muppet?

Why should I read this?

I am going to share something with you, something that will go against everything we have been lead to believe. Something that will change your life for ever, if you are willing to read, learn, consider an alternate position, and question the status quo. When I say change your life, I really mean it. It has changed mine in just 3 weeks. The best thing is you don’t have to buy anything, you don’t have to pay me to tell you, you don’t even have to go to the gym or run a marathon. You just need to learn to unlearn and break an addiction.

For those of you who are regular readers of my posts you will know I love running. I am also passionate about healthy eating, and improving brain function for long term health. Why? So I can live a full life and then drop dead without dying of all those illnesses that are so prevalent in Muppet Land. But more on dropping dead in a future blog. Anyway let's start the adventure to you not being a Muppet.

Suppose that an archaeologist visited Muppet Land from outer space were trying to explain human history to his friends back on that planet over a skype call. He might illustrate the results of his findings like this. He could use a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the Human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m (about 10,000 years ago we adopted agriculture. This is when we started being Muppet's.

The Shape of things to come

Before we were Muppet's we were lean, tall, and did not develop many of the diseases that afflict a significant proportion of Muppet Land today. We all know that during the 1940s-1970’s our grandma’s and great grandmas, even some of our parents used to always cook with lard, butter and they often used duck fat. All of these were low in Vegetable Fats (PUFA). People were generally lean and in those years’ obesity and diabetes rates were very small.

The examination of diets before we became Muppet's can remind us of the remarkable ability of humans to adapt to their environment and can provide a context within which to view current diets. In contrast to current Western diets, the traditional diets of many pre-agricultural peoples were relatively low in carbohydrate. In North America, for example, the traditional diet of many First Nations peoples of Canada before European migration comprised fish, meat, wild plants, and berries. The change in lifestyle of several North American aboriginal populations occurred as recently as the late 1800s, and the numerous ensuing health problems were extensively documented. Whereas many aspects of lifestyle were altered with modernization, these researchers suspected that the health problems came from the change in nutrition—specifically, the introduction of sugar and flour.

Marathoners and even Muppet's have to eat carbs, don’t they?

For 6 years I have been trying to lose 2-3 Kg of body fat. I was a typical chubby Muppet Runner. I was training 10+ hours a week and running between 60-80kms a week, and it was always a struggle to stay under 72kg. I was so fixated on making sure I had enough glycogen I had to eat carbs all day. I was addicted to carbs, I couldn't survive without them, and that is what I thought. After my most recent Marathon my coach asked me to consider attending an event with other runners to learn about nutrition for athletes. The session was with Dr Stephen Phinney M,D, PhD. It was a session about Low Carbohydrate Performance. I thought this must be a joke. Run a Marathon with no carbs, no GU’s, and don’t load up on pasta what would Tim Noakes say. (Tim was the father of Carb Loading).

I Trust my coach, so I went along. I walked into the room and it was full of very fat people. I thought what am I doing, there was much talk about diabetes an chronic diseases etc. Then I asked someone next to me if this was the event for the athletes’ and they said no that is Thursday night. They said tonight is the one for people that want to learn more about how Low Carb diet can help their Diabetes and weight problems. Fortunately at the event I spoke to 3 lean people converted Muppet's all who were Marathoners. They told how doing this High Fat Low Carbohydrate Nutrition thing was amazing, even some of the larger people who were diabetics told me how this diet had changed their life and how well it was making them feel. I was astounded. I thought there must be some BS going on here.

I went home with the book called The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate performance and could not put it down. I read it in 2 nights and never looked back. The next day I rang my Nutritionist and made an appointment with my GP, to discuss moving to this sort of approach for my nutrition.

I stopped being a Muppet

We all know that if you eat a lot of fat, you will get fat and put yourself at risk of cardiovascular disease. We know that if you eat too much and don’t exercise enough, you will become fat.

As a part of not being a Muppet, I started carrying out an experiment on my own body for the last three weeks, I started the week before Christmas. I plan to run the experiment for a minimum of 7 months till after I run the Gold Coast Marathon in July, and then depending on the report that comes back from Exercise Research Australia, my Nutritionist, my GP and my vanity mirror I may continue or stop.

My Curious Approach

During the last 3 weeks, I’ve drastically changed my eating habits and I’ve done a lot of reading and research. I have to tell you I feel amazing, so alive, my skin looks nicer, I am leaner and strangely I am not hungry.

I’m not a nutritionist. I’m not a doctor. I'm not a Muppet, I’m just a runner. Therefore I am not qualified to give you advice and I strongly suggest that if you wish to do your own experiment, you get professional advice.

I am curious and I want to live a healthy life and be lean and not chubby. So after I went to the seminar I refer to I did a lot of reading, watching videos. I read medical journals, Nutrition Journals, research papers, and used the monthly internet quota in 2 weeks. I read more in 2 weeks than I have in several months.

So these are the things I have read about and learned in the last 3 weeks. I hope you have an open mind:

Eating a lot of good fat doesn't make you fat

The supermarket is full of low fat products that come with heart foundation ticks. Many of these are full of sugar and processed manufactured food. That is what makes them healthy, right? High fat versions are not healthy. Well until 3 weeks ago this is what I thought.

FACT: If you have a high fat AND a high carbohydrate diet (sometimes called the ‘standard American/Australian diet’) you will get fat- but it is not because of the fat. It is because of the carbohydrates.

The physiology of this, as much as I understand it, seems to work like this. When you eat carbohydrates, the pancreas releases a spike of insulin that enables the body to process the carbohydrates so that energy can pass into the cells. This same process instructs the body to store the fat. So the result is you get fat.

However, if you eat a high fat diet without a low level of carbohydrates, the body will quickly learn to use the fat as fuel, which doesn't require any special physiological process. No insulin is necessary. This learning to burn fat is called adaption into Ketosis, or Nutritional Ketosis.

The diagram below shows how good fats like butter and lard use have dropped while PUFA and MUFA have increased. This graph looks similar in scale to our obesity growth path when you look at the dates. Remember the change in our government recommended food intakes moved away from Saturated fats to PUFA largely made from grains. This is when we all started to be Muppet's.

Lesson: Insulin turns off fat burning and promotes storage

In 3 weeks of my experiment this is what I have found: If you adopt of low carb (under 50gms per day)/high fat diet (LCHF), you will lose weight. You don’t have to count calories. You don’t have to worry to much about overeating fat because it only takes a little and you are full. Unlike carbohydrates, fat is very filling (satiating). You will feel full quicker and eat less. Some days I only need 2 healthy large meals a day and I am full, I feel so good, and I have lost 2 Kgs without being hungry.

Eating a lot of fat will not give you heart disease (as long as you have low carbs)

But what about your cholesterol, right? Aren’t you clogging your arteries and putting yourself at risk of a heart attack? The fact is that cholesterol is far more complicated that we’ve been lead to believe. A high cholesterol reading is meaningless. You’ve probably heard of good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. This is how it breaks down.

HDL is the good cholesterol. High fat diets (with low carbs) raise HDL levels. In fact, saturated fat (like that found in fatty meat, Olive oil, Coconut Oil, Butter) is good for this.

LDL is generally considered the bad cholesterol. LDL can consist of large fluffy particles or small dense particles. Large particles of LDL are harmless. Small particles are dangerous and are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The evidence seems to be that diets high in fat and low in carbs raise the level of large particle LDL- not small particle LDL. When testing your cholesterol, the key thing to look for is your level of triglycerides. If these are high, that is bad news. High HDL is a good thing. High LDL may be fine if triglycerides are in a normal range.

If you are fat, it is probably not driven by the fact you eat too much and don’t exercise enough

Most Muppet's assume that the human body is like a black box that will process all food (in the form of calories) the same way. A healthy body has a way of regulating its fat tissue and hence its weight across a very narrow range at a healthy level. You could call these Muppet's metabolically well regulated. We all know Muppet's who can eat and eat and eat, and they never put on weight or lose weight. I call them all sorts of names, well I used to.

Some Muppet's have a hormonal or metabolic reaction to large amounts of carbohydrates. To test this I had a DNA test done looking at a whole range of things including my genes and the tolerance for carbohydrate sensitivity. And yes my genotype shows a high sensitivity to cabs. It also stated that I could have long term insulin sensitivity as I get older if I consume a lot of carbs.

I don’t pretend to understand this comprehensively, but this disorder of excess fat accumulation has nothing to do with ‘will power’. It is all that yummy sugar and carbohydrate consumption that generate insulin spikes. Insulin promotes the storage of fat cells. It seems years of insulin spikes can lead to the body becoming insulin resistant. That is a recipe for obesity and diabetes.

Now if you look at some real world data you can see that since the world changed its eating habits to a focus on grains, wheat and flour and processed foods and away from those horrible saturated fats, meat, and whole foods the global trend in Obesity and Diabetes has sky rocketed.

Worldwide, there has been a startling increase in rates of obesity and overweight in both adults (28% increase) and children (up by 47%) in the past 33 years, with the number of overweight and obese people rising from 857 million in 1980 to 2.1 billion in 2013, according to a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013, published in The Lancet.[1]

FACT: Worldwide, at least 2.8 million people die each year as a result of being overweight or obese. Overweight and obesity lead to adverse metabolic effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. Risks of coronary heart disease, ischemic stroke and type 2 diabetes. Raised body mass index also increases the risk of cancer of the breast, colon, prostate, endometrium, kidney and gall bladder. (Source WHO)

Why are we all addicted to carbohydrates? (Excluding me for the last 3 weeks)

The ‘metabolic syndrome’ argument is that these Muppet's have become metabolically disregulated through consumption of high levels of sugar carbohydrates. This drives their appetite crazy. They have to eat more, and they especially have to eat more sugar and carbohydrates which feeds further hunger. They have become physiologically (and psychologically) addicted to sugar and carbohydrates. The body is no longer able to hormonally regulate its fat tissue across a healthy range. Without that hormonal regulation, Muppet's become overweight.

THIS WAS ME only 3 weeks ago, I would eat so many carbs because I loved them, I craved them, I would not eat butter, I would eat low fat everything, I would screw my nose up if people at cream. I would have to eat every 3 hours. I would freak out if I could not eat. If I was going on a run that was more than one hour I would take GU before and then drink my sports performance (fat Muppet running) drink, and on return home I would eat within 10 minutes or I would almost fall over. YES ONLY 3 WEEKS AGO.

If this is all true, how is it possible that the nutritional authorities have got it so wrong and continue to get it so wrong?

It is fascinating to look at the history of thinking around diet, obesity and weight loss in the last 150 years. I have to add that this is something that the LCHF advocates discuss at length.

For 100 years up until the 1950s, research on weight loss commonly prescribed avoiding carbohydrates- bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, oats etc. In the 1950s, America became terrified of coronary heart disease. There was a sharp increase in deaths from heart attacks. Between 1960 and 1990 there were significant changes in the dietary recommendations by the USA which were largely pushed and funded by research by companies and scientists associated with large Agricultural companies. The Food pyramid and nutrition guidelines were prepared which pushed the need for us to eat large amounts of grain, cereals, bread and starchy vegetables, they also promoted Polyunsaturated Fats (PUFA) and directed everyone to reduce the consumption of Saturated Fats (SFA).

Today the international advocates for LCHF diets nowadays are rarely nutritionists or dietitians. Instead they are cardiologists, sports scientists and neurologists. They come from related fields but are not part of the dominant nutrition paradigm.

My Nutritionist initially was not supportive of helping me with my experiment, but after doing some research she agreed to build and monitor me on a 50gms a day Carb with High Good Fat eating Plan. My GP on the other hand freaked out. I bet my GP that my Cholesterol readings will come back better in 7 months.

Processed food described as ‘low fat’ is probably bad for you. Avoid them and eat ‘real food’ instead.

Low fat food in supermarkets is healthy right? Right? Wrong again! When they began taking fat out of food because of the public’s fear that it contributes to cardiovascular disease, the food companies found that it became unpalatable. It tasted disgusting.

So what did they do? They replaced the fat with sugar- much of it high fructose corn syrup. The next time you are in the supermarket, have a look at how much sugar there is in the foods you buy, remembering that 4g represents one teaspoon of sugar. There is no nutritionist who will tell you that eating piles of sugar is good for you. And yet, there it is. heaps of sugar in almost all food that is advertised as ‘low fat’ and healthy.

Do you actually understand this, do you read the back of the packets and look at the average serve sizes and think about how much sugar is in what you eat?

Just look at what they Heart Foundation in Australia the USA and other countries are now seemingly reviewing, or cancelling their programs and are not saying to much. Wake up, why do amazing breakfast cereals that our kids love full of sugar get a Heart Foundation Tick?

My results so far

1. I’ve been losing fat around my belly, and upper body. Over the last 6 years no matter how much I have run, I’ve always retained had belly fat. The only time I had a six pack was in 1989 when I did the SAS Selection course and I was basically starved for 4 weeks and exercised 20 hours a day.
2. I am not hungry, Just yesterday I had a home made cereal made from Amaranth, and seeds with coconut cream only a small serve with freshly picked berries at about 7.30 and didn't eat again till 2pm, which was 100gms of grass feed mince with some capsicum, and 4 lettuce leaves, then dinner last night was 140gms of T, Bone steak cooked in Italian Olive oil and butter, with green salad and spinach. I got up this morning and ran for 105mins and did not eat till 1030am. So I went for 15 hrs with no food and I feel great. NOT HANGING ON THE FRIDGE OR PANTRY DOOR WONDERING WHAT TO EAT EVERY 3 HRS.
3. Importantly my body is burning fat now, I am in Nutritional Ketosis.
4. I feel lean and light and much more energetic
5. I am running faster

What have I done differently?

Food (Meaning having a structured Professional Nutrition Plan)

1. Cold Turkey to only 50gms of carbs a day
2. Protein down to 1.5gm/kg body weight
3. Fibre 30-35gm per day
4. Carbs 50gm per day
5. Supplements to make up for grains now being eaten (Thiamine (B1)), plus fish oil and a few others
6. Raw meat weight 250gm per day
7. 2 eggs per day on average
8. Lots of pure olive oil, coconut cream, oil, Fresh Salmon, Prawns
9. Increase Sea Salt intake slightly
10. Eat Slowly, Eat Slowly

Behavior/Mind

1. Stopped being a Muppet
2. Blood Tests before starting, and in 6 months
3. VO2 Max Tests in Jan and in 6 Months
4. Marathon Runs performance in last 5 years and in 6 Months
5. Have the belief that this is good and will work
6. Enjoy the oil and fat really flavor the taste
7. Continue running the same but with water only
8. Continue to think how it will feel to run a sub 3.35 Marathon

Next Steps

1. Run my fastest half marathon at the Geelong Iron Man for my race partner John Hallis on Feb 8th
2. Try and get to the higher level of Nutritional Ketosis (within next 4 weeks)
3. Book in my next VO2 Max, Bloods, and Fat Oxidisation Test 6 weeks before the Gold Coast Marathon
4. Keep reading and learning
5. Keep a diary of how I feel each day in regards to hunger, sleep, mental alertness, happiness
6. Stick to my plan and don’t be tempted to eat all those yummy vanilla slices…and don't go back to Muppet Land

Last thoughts. An Article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2007 states the following:

The persistence of an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes suggests that new nutritional strategies are needed if the epidemic is to be overcome. A promising nutritional approach suggested by this thematic review is carbohydrate restriction. Recent studies show that, under conditions of carbohydrate restriction, fuel sources shift from glucose and fatty acids to fatty acids and ketones, and that carbohydrate-restricted diets lead to appetite reduction, weight loss, and improvement in surrogate markers of cardiovascular disease.

So the question is are you going to be the shape of things to come?

Are you going to continue to be a Muppet?

If you want to know more please email me [email protected]