The low carb/high fat diet has had the biggest impact on my thoughts concerning nutrition, diet, and exercise. This diet contradicts many established trends currently dominant among the general population. These include: we get fat because we eat more calories than we use, saturated fat is bad, cholesterol is bad, salt is bad, whole grains are good for you, and long distance jogging is good for you.
The potential benefits to being on a high fat diet are:
- The ability to lose weight quickly.
- The ability to not eat for a long time and not feel hungry, and not lose physical or mental performance.
- The end of sugar cravings and binge eating.
- Having a greater amount of energy throughout the day for both physical and mental activities.
- Better sleep.
- The ability to perform in athletic events for a long time without hitting the "wall". The reason for this is that a person can store about 40,000 calories of fat, so it is unlikely that the person will run out of calories during any given athletic event.
- Reduced chance of getting cancer (cancer cells feed on glucose).
- Reduced chance of getting diabetes.
- Reduced chance of getting alzheimer and dementia.
- Reduced chance of getting a heart attack or stroke.
The high fat diet has the following principles:
1. Avoid carbohydrates, especially empty carbs and sugar. This means to avoid pasta, wheat, bread, corn, rice, soft drinks, fruit drinks and sugar.
2. Eat foods which contain large amounts of fat (including saturated fat), and protein. This includes meat, fish, milk, cheese, butter, lard, eggs and nuts.
It is important to understand the biological process that causes us to get fat. The following summary comes from Gary Taubes book: Why We Get Fat. Most people believe we get fat because we eat more calories than we work off (by exercise and physical activity). This is incorrect. The reason we get fat is because of a hormone called insulin which is created when we eat carbs. Insulin tells the cells in the body that they need to absorb glucose (sugar) that is entering the body because glucose is actually poisonous in the bloodstream. Insulin also tells the body to stop burning fat for energy in order to use up the incoming glucose. Insulin accomplishes these two tasks using two enzymes: Lipoprotein Lipase (LPL) and Hormone-Sensitive Lipase (HSL). LPL tells the cells to accept glucose. So the more LPL on your cells, the fatter you will become. HSL tells the cells to release fat. So the more HSL on your cells, the thinner you will become. High levels of insulin increases LPL and decreases HSL, which is necessary in order to remove glucose from the bloodstream where it is toxic.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Friday, September 6, 2013
Reply to “Libertarians are the New Communists”
“Radical libertarianism assumes that humans are
wired only to be selfish, when in fact cooperation is the height of human
evolution.”
Libertarianism does not assume people are wired
only to be selfish. Libertarianism is
simply the belief that the initial use of force is not permitted in society,
including government officials. If you
want to be selfless in a libertarian society, you are free to do so. So long as you act in a voluntary manner, you
are acting within a libertarianism framework.
You can have completely selfless societies acting within a libertarian
society such as a communist enclave or a group of monks.
“It assumes that societies are efficient
mechanisms requiring no rules or enforcers, when, in fact, they are fragile
ecosystems prone to collapse and easily overwhelmed by free-riders.”
There are rules in a libertarian society. The rules are imposed by the owners of
private property. If you don’t like the
rule set by the owner, you are free not to engage that owner in voluntary exchange. For example, the owner of a theater may have
a rule that says no cell phones allowed.
If you don’t like that rule, you can choose not to visit that
theater. It is wrong to say libertarian
societies have no rules.
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