I've done a fair bit of reading on Paleo / Primal etc as well as done various activities from ultra trail races to X-fit. Below are my observations as I don't want to spend so much time on it that I don't enjoy it.

- If I eat high fat , low carb I loose weight and I feel better. My energy is better, I feel less need to eat etc. How does it translate on the trail, well pretty darn good. I carry less food than my friends (and I only eat half of it usually). I seem to have more constant energy and generally feel better. How does it translate to moderate work loads ? Great, I do more pushups, more of just about anything, however where it does not benefit is fast and hard anerobic type of workouts, those I don't perform as well, but perhaps it's a need to train my body.
- If I were going on a long backpacking trip, I would train myself for low carb and carry a lot of fat. I've done it so many times now, that I can translate pretty seamlessly.
- If I'm doing an ultra style event, I carry some sugars, but probably only about 30% others do and still eat a lot of fat / protein stuff. Sure I don't push the uphill the same way, but I run the down a lot faster.
- If I was going for time, in a high intensity event, pushing myself for the whole time give me sugar. However, this is my goal this spring, is to try and train myself past that, just as your body adapts to eating low carb. Perhaps it ends up being a no go, perhaps not. I'll know more in a few weeks

With respect to what Piper did, by lowering caloric intake she lost weight. This could have been done with carbs, fats, or proteins. It really doesn't matter.

Actually it does, Dave. I've been monitored by my endocrinologist (diabetic doctor) for the past year now to determine what the problem is for me concerning insulin (I'm a LADA diabetic...started as a Type 2 and morphed into a Type 1). I watch every calorie I eat and the corresponding grams of fat, protein, and carbs. The amount of calories I eat doesn't change, but I've been experimenting with what happens when I raise or lower my carb intake, and adjust my fats and proteins accordingly to keep the caloric intake the same. What I've found is that when I take in more than about 70 grams of carbs a day (this is me, personally. Other people have different needs, so please don't use this number as gospel), my weight inevitably goes up, as well as my blood sugars. Lower the carbs and my weight goes down, as well as my blood sugars. I've been able to more or less control my blood sugars according to how many carbs I eat and have correspondingly also controlled my weight that way. Because I am a Type 1 diabetic and thus require injected insulin, controlling my weight had always been a very difficult thing, because the high amounts of insulin were making my weight go up. I experienced many hypoglycemic attacks because of the high amounts of insulin. Lowering carbs, though, has more than halved the amount of insulin I take everyday, which simultaneously almost eliminated my hypoglycemic attacks, and also got me losing weight back down to the weight I was in my early thirties.

The needs of a non-diabetic concerning carbs and natural production of insulin are no different from that of a diabetic. The only difference is that a diabetic cannot produce their own insulin or their insulin cannot be accessed. When a full-blown diabetic initially becomes diabetic one of the classic symptoms is emaciation. No matter how much they eat they cannot gain weight and they are constantly ravenous. This is because the insulin is not being used or is absent in the body. Without insulin you cannot gain weight. Without carbs, insulin is impotent. Before the invention of artificial insulin, diabetics were kept alive by severely restricting their carb intake. They managed to do quite well on a diet of mostly fats, medium protein, and very low carbs. Carbs are still necessary for health, though, so some carbs had to be eaten, and with no insulin, many diabetics died fairly young.

The ketogenic diet simulates a natural environment in which insulin is not needed in great amounts or over-produced by the body. Modern diets, however, bombard the body with huge amounts of carbs that stimulates far too great production of insulin, and with all that insulin being produced, first those eating the high amounts of carbs get fat, and when the carb intake goes on too long, the insulin production is exhausted (it was never meant to be produced in such high amounts)... that's when people become diabetic. Diabetes has become epidemic because of a combination of too many carbs and overproduction of insulin and a lack of exercise. People don't eat significantly more food today than they did thirty years ago... but the TYPE of food they eat has changed dramatically. It's this change in type of food... huge increases in carb intake... that has caused the obesity epidemic.

I can eat a whole stick of butter... pure fat... and not gain any weight or get a spike in my blood sugars. The amount of calories in 100 grams of fat is significantly higher than that of 100 grams of carbs. I eat one slice of white bread, though, and my blood sugar sky rockets, plus over a short period I quickly start gaining weight.

Edited by butuki on 02/29/2012 11:22:01 MST.

It's clear that the knee-jerk naysayers are not actually reading any of the research. Nor do they have any first-hand experience. It was my initial response to think eating this way is bad, too, but I have changed my mind based on reading the information and first-hand experience. Here's another really good article to read.

I'm also amazed that since this is a backpacking LIGHT website, people would be so absolutely closed-minded about a means to lighten your pack (and your "spine out" weight).

Guess I hit a nerve.

But again - lowering your caloric intake has provided you with the results. Are you able to prove me wrong?

Here is the question for everyone... does a Ketogenic diet make the body more efficient for the long term? Is it healthier for you in the long term?

Miguel would say yes, and I agree with him.

The other thing is; our brains think "weight loss" when we see the word "diet." To Miguel, diet means healthy lifestyle and a more efficient metabolism. I also agree with him.

"Is it healthier for you in the long term?"

Can you please post or re-post the studies validating this?

Not trying to start an argument but really would like to know. The basic premise of the diet is similar to Atkins and the latter had issues.

Edited by FamilyGuy on 02/29/2012 14:22:20 MST.

David,

Miguel has already posted a lot. But has anyone done a study for a lifetime of data? No, the theories have not gained wide-spread public attention until the last few years. And of course, there are dissenting studies/opinions. So one has to make their own decision and suffer or enjoy the consequences.

I have been eating Paleo food almost exclusively for the past couple of months. I have lost a few pounds, but my weight has stabilized. I feel great. However, I was not overweight or ill in the first place, as I have always gotten a lot of exercise. I figure I might be able to continue to hike until I am 120 or so. I no longer have a craving for sweets or chips either. I have a jar of M&Ms on my desk I have not touched since I started this and have no desire to eat them. I haven't even eaten ice cream... although I probably will at the end my next big hike -- as a celebration of sorts :)

Hi BPLers,
Have any of you read "Primal Body, Primal Mind, Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life" by Nora T. Gedgaudas. She explains how the Paleo diet works with more documentation and research results than most of the others I have read on the subject so far, including Mark Sissons, Loren Cordain and Robb Wolf. Maybe it's just the same info but presented more completly?
Is there a list of Paleo foods that you can recomend that lend well to lightweight backpacking? I haven't read all of this thread yet so I'll apologize if I've repeated others comments, questions or thoughts.
Best Regards,
Mulestomper

Carl,

Several of us have read Sissons and Cordain. Miguel has posted a lot about both.

Actually there was a thread a while ago about posting Paleo recipes, not sure how that is going to progress.

Guess I hit a nerve.

It doesn't really bother me what other people do and want to think; after all it's their body and health. However, I have gone through a hell of a lot of suffering and fear in dealing with the often destructive effects of diabetes, including a number of times almost dying, and my motivation is that I want to stay alive and live as long as possible without complications or suffering. In order to do that I have to learn, for myself, what is possible and necessary. Following quackery or some fad does me absolutely no good because the consequences of tricking my body will show up, regardless of what I want to believe. Diabetes takes no sides and doesn't care what theories we might have. It will only react to what works and whatever reduces the exacerbation of the complications. At the same time, do it wrong and diabetes will destroy me without the slightest bit of conscience. It is a disease of metabolism and lifestyle.

All I can do then is to learn all I can about what causes it and what I can do to prevent the causations that manifest the complications. I've been reading all I can for 15 years now. Initially, due to my having been indoctrinated with the low-fat dogma, I concentrated on vegetarian diets and low GI carbohydrates, cutting out almost all fat. That's what my doctors all recommended, too. It never worked. My diabetic complications just kept getting worse and my insulin doses kept increasing. My doctors had no idea what was causing it, and why I was gaining so much weight, in spite of my never having eaten very much and being very physically active (I ran 10 kilometers everyday). I first found out about the low carb diet when I read Atkins in the late 90's, but I didn't trust what he recommended, mainly because of the distrust I had in fat. It was only when I read, in 1999, the first paleo book that I came across, Ray Audette's "Neanderthin" (Audette had Type 2 diabetes and arthritis and cured himself of both by severely cutting carbs), that I began to question the dogma that I'd been taught since the mid-70's. I tried on and off since then to do the paleo diet, but doubt and lack of information kept me from diving in. Living in Japan, far from all the goings on in the paleo movement, made it doubly difficult to have any idea whether going this route was safe or sound.

It was only two years ago when a friend recommended Mark Sisson's "Primal Blueprint" that everything really clicked. He explained it in terms of the metabolism of insulin and when I read that and compared it to what was happening with my body, suddenly it all made sense. When I tried it out, it worked! Within a month a fungus that had completely taken over my right hand and right foot and the right side of my face, due to high blood sugars, completely disappeared. The gastroparesis that was ravaging my stomach and esophagus disappeared. My blood sugars normalized and my dose of insulin plummeted. I lost weight. My migraines disappeared. And for the first time in 20 years my insomnia disappeared (I have only had insomnia one time since I started the diet and exercise routine last June). I was astounded, to say the least. And so was my doctor, since I had managed to do in one month what she had been unable to do in 10 years. She still remains very cautious about the whole thing, and still won't read the copies of data and abstracts that I've brought in to back up what I was doing, but she's at least willing to let me give it a go, while monitoring me.

For me this is life or death, not simply a weight loss program. I cannot be cavalier about what I eat or how I live and move. Diabetes is on my mind 24 hours a day, even when I sleep. So yes, I'd imagine that when someone makes an offhand remark about all that I've put so much effort and time and anguish into learning, cavalierly brushing aside tomes of serious studies and very concerned work by people trying to make sense of two epidemics... diabetes and obesity... that are sweeping the world, I get somewhat defensive. All I am asking is that you give the information a serious look at and not just toss it out as hogwash. I'd go further and say, give the paleo lifestyle a try and see how it works for you, but if you are healthy and happy with your body and well-being, then it might seem rather unnecessary.

I do believe, as Nick and Piper have suggested, that living this way makes your body far more efficient. For backpacking that means less weight on your back, less consumption of fuel, and longer periods of walking without constantly having to replenish caloric stores with quick spiking sugars.

Have any of you read "Primal Body, Primal Mind, Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life" by Nora T. Gedgaudas

Carl, yes, I have read her book. As you say, it is chock full of data and studies and, because she's a nutritionist, lots of sober information about how food works.

I found it very dry reading, though, and difficult to get through. I think it works better for people who already have basic knowledge of what the paleo diet is, rather than as an introduction to the diet and lifestyle. It does well to help a reader refine the questions they might have about the different aspects of nutrition. Her recommendations for supplements are invaluable, for instance.

"I do believe, as Nick and Piper have suggested, that living this way makes your body far more efficient. For backpacking that means less weight on your back, less consumption of fuel, and longer periods of walking without constantly having to replenish caloric stores with quick spiking sugars."

Miguel,
I was tracking with your post until this paragraph and completely get the logic behind what you are doing I can definitely see how you could train your body to be able to operate without external fuel sources during physical activities. I do this on a regular basis by doing runs in the 10-20 mile range without any fuel before or during the run. But unless I'm missing something, I can't possible see how your body will become more efficient and require you to consume less calories thus making your pack lighter. I suppose on a short term basis that could work if you have sufficient body fat to be handle the caloric needs of a trip but that sounds impracticle for anything except maybe a weekend trip.

If you are saying that you can hike without eating massive carbs then great, I suspect you could within some limits. But I'm missing how that translates into:

"For backpacking that means less weight on your back, less consumption of fuel"

Help!

But unless I'm missing something, I can't possible see how your body will become more efficient and require you to consume less calories thus making your pack lighter. I suppose on a short term basis that could work if you have sufficient body fat to be handle the caloric needs of a trip but that sounds impracticle for anything except maybe a weekend trip.

Please note, I did not say "less calories". You still need the same amount of calories to do the same amount of work. It is the calories that are the fuel, after all, not the macronutrients. I said, "more efficient". Fat burns very slowly in the body and packs far more calories per gram than either carbs or proteins (9 kcal/g for fat vs. 4 kcal/g for both proteins and carbs). You therefore need less weight in food for the same number of calories. The only caution you need to think about is when you are doing high amounts of anaerobic exercise, such as fast climbing with big loads or running high above your maximum heart rate. At those times carbs work better than fat... and stave off bonking. But it is not as efficient as fats and the effects drop off very quickly.

By "consumption of fuel" I meant the fuel for your stove, not the fuel you are eating! :-)

Edited by butuki on 02/29/2012 19:59:38 MST.

Now it makes sense. You are taking more fats vs. Carbs and that should get you higher calorie per oz. I will have to give this some thought. I have a number of long hikes/runs planned in the upcoming weeks. Normally I am carb heavy and it has worked beautifully. I may have to do a hike where I try higher fat vs. carbs and see what happens. I have no doubt that it would work in low intensity, but how intense could I go with high fat vs carbs.

" I have no doubt that it would work in low intensity, but how intense could I go with high fat vs carbs."

That depends to a large degree on your VO2 max, Greg. The higher your VO2 max the more efficiently you will be able to oxidize fat, which requiires more O2 to oxidize.
You can train to increase your VO2 max, which will in turn increase your ability to use fat at higher levels of intensity when exercising. Even so, from what exercise physiology I have read, a certain amount of carbs are required to support the oxidization of fat withing cells in a process called "The Krebs Cycle" or "Citric Acid Cycle", so you can't completely eliminate them from your diet.

I'm not trying to be down on anyone, in part because I think we are different, and all have to find our groove. I hike with some fast happy vegans and some fast happy carnivores.

FWIW:

"A new diet study just out from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition went to a lot of trouble to prove the obvious. When it comes to weight loss, how much you eat matters more than the proportion of fat, carbohydrate, and protein in your foods."

That comes from a very good blog, Food Politics. I have it in my daily RSS feed.

My personal attitude is that my body runs well on food ;-), and I try to give it a good mix of real food. I try to eat more veg than my natural tendency. I try to stay away from processed things. I prefer strip-mall Cambodian joints to fast food. It's the happy omnivore approach.

"A new diet study just out from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition went to a lot of trouble to prove the obvious. When it comes to weight loss, how much you eat matters more than the proportion of fat, carbohydrate, and protein in your foods."

Thanks for posting the link. I have been told that it is not as simple as this on this thread. Of course it is.

Piper - excellent article

If you eat lots of simple carbs, then you'll be hungrier so you'll eat more calories

If you can have a simple carb diet and eat less and have a healthy weight for a lifetime, more power to you, but this doesn't work for most people

"He said if you create a new market with a brand-new manufactured food, give it a brand-new fancy name, put a big advertising budget behind it, you can have a market all to yourself and force your competitors to catch up. You can't do that with fruits and vegetables. It's harder to differentiate an apple from an apple"

Everything today is dominated by how big companies can make more money

They're like a cancer that needs to be brought back under control

Here's a link to a collection of real, relevant research *on humans* that pertains to intermittent fasting:

http://alanaragon.com/an-objective-look-at-intermittent-fasting.html

It's not a rosy picture. The evidence is basically against it in most respects.

As usually turns out to be the case, results in other animals does not translate to results in humans.

Just because our ancestors lived a certain way, does not mean we should ascribe any higher or lower value to that way of living. There is basically no evolutionary pressure to live healthily to 100, so it is laughable to think that our bodies would be well-attuned to keeping themselves healthy for a very long time if only we could do what our ancestors did. There *was* a lot of evolutionary pressure to survive flashpoint situations (outrun a predator, succeed in an intense hunt, etc) which is not the way we live now at all.

Edited by dasbin on 03/01/2012 12:09:56 MST.

"Even so, from what exercise physiology I have read, a certain amount of carbs are required to support the oxidization of fat withing cells in a process called "The Krebs Cycle" or "Citric Acid Cycle", so you can't completely eliminate them from your diet."

Your body can create glucose from a variety of non-carbohydrate sources via a process called gluconeogenesis.

Some biochemical food for thought:

Glucose is metabolized via glycolysis, while fatty acids are metabolized via beta oxidation. Both yield Acetyl-CoA and electrons that are used by mitochondria via the Krebs cycle to produce ATP, which is a kind of universal energy currency within the body.

The electrons from glucose enter the mitochondria's electron transport chain at complex I, while the electrons from fatty acids enter at complex II.

Complex I leaks a substantial number of electrons before they can be utilized in the electron transport chain. Complex II doesn't. Leaked electrons form free radicals that oxidize the inner membrane of the mitochondrion, eventually triggering apoptosis and killing that mitochondrion.

Additionally, fatty acids and ketone bodies upregulate mitochondrial uncoupling proteins, which allow the electron transport chain to flow freely at "tickover" (i.e., in the presence of unused ATP) without leaking electrons. Glucose does not do this.

Lastly, fatty acids and ketone bodies increase mitochondrial biogenesis in skeletal muscle. More mitochondria means greater endurance.

This is all rather myopic, but the implications are interesting nonetheless.