393 posts
It's been two years since the last edition of this post. I also have editions from 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017, and 2020. I still weigh 182 pounds and am 6'2 tall. I’ve now maintained a 40-pound weight...
Read more →Running a broken link checker is one of my tasks for this blog. The short version is that when something breaks, I give it a few days to clear up. If it doesn't, I go back and fix the link. Usually,...
Read more →For the first time in my life, I tracked all the food I ate for a full month. I did not weigh the food. I started January at the weight of 183 and ended at 183, which is a BMI of 23.2 (Normal). I...
Read more →Time to take a victory lap. I had my first Omega-3 test done and the numbers look good.  I gave my numbers to ChatGPT and asked it to...
Read more →Recently, The Huberman Lab did a show devoted to microplastics. The show was good, and I learned some things, but I think he missed some details. The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to...
Read more →In my previous post, I discussed whether there is a toxic food problem in America. The short version is that I'm skeptical that added chemicals play a bigger role than the excess calories from...
Read more →A topic that is getting a lot of publicity this year is the thesis that America has a toxic food problem that is making us sicker and fatter than other countries. RFK Jr. and some prominent voices on...
Read more →Most of you know that I have maintained a 40-pound weight loss for almost 5 years now. The first 20 pounds came from different variations of the Potato Hack and Potato Diet. Then I switched to...
Read more →For years, I’ve thought about a topic: How do our beliefs about nutrition take shape, particularly in a field rife with conflicting viewpoints? Over time, I’ve fallen for various nutritional...
Read more →Recently, I was giving the potato hack pitch to someone interested in losing weight. Like most of the times I've had this conversation, I could tell my advice would not be followed. Concepts such as...
Read more →There are endless debates on how to lose weight. I'm bored of them because people have lost weight using numerous diets: low-fat, low-carb, vegan, keto, fasting, and even a Twinkie Diet. It is the...
Read more →It has been several years since I did a strict Potato Hack. Despite the nonsense you might read on SlimeMoldTimeMold, there is a proper method to performing a potato hack as spelled out in the book...
Read more →I posted What I Eat and What I Don't Eat - 2023 Edition six months ago. I plan to add a new edition later this year or next. In the meantime, I thought I'd do a show-and-tell with my pantry. These...
Read more →There are two nutritional camps I respect who disagree with each other. I see the value in each path and will try to reconcile the differences. We all know what the vegans represent—no animal...
Read more →Watching the battles between the defenders of saturated fat and those defending seed oils has been fun. Recently, Dr. Layne Norton posted a video saying that seed oils were fine and maybe even...
Read more →In the comment thread of Keto and Starvation Signals, there was a discussion of how I would approach "serious" weight loss. It was too much for a comment, so I put together this post along with...
Read more →Last month, I posted Keto and Carnivore Diets Were Always a No For Me. On that list of reasons was "Chronic starvation signals". I never considered a keto diet because of the unknown risk of being in...
Read more →In my previous post Checking in on the Carb Haters, I dunked on a few of the keto and carnivore zealots for coming around to the opinion that I had a decade ago. Note that I am fine with cycling in...
Read more →More than a decade ago, I saw the Paleo movement get hijacked by the low-carb zealots. Initially, I fell for some of the lies about carbs, but well before keto and later carnivore came around, I had...
Read more →I recently read The Book on Heat: The Science of Heat for Weight Loss, Performance and Health by Brad Pilon. It altered a view of mine that I've held for decades related to diet and exercise. My...
Read more →It has been 3 years since the last edition of this post. I also have ones from 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2017. Before I get into the foods, I'll describe where I am now. I weigh 180 pounds (81.6 kg) at a...
Read more →There persists this belief that coming off caffeine will result in headaches for a few days. I hear it frequently on health podcasts as if it were accepted gospel. Even Michael Pollan, who wrote...
Read more →I am currently testing the higher protein advice of Dr. Peter Attia, which I mentioned back in April. > This year I started increasing my protein levels and I started eating breakfast 3-4 times a...
Read more →More than a decade ago, I posted Not a PubMed Warrior. I outlined several reasons why I didn't use PubMed as a tool for this blog. > To start, I am not qualified to read a nutritional study. I’ve...
Read more →In my previous post, I covered the recent push for more protein and less fasting. The biggest proponent is Peter Attia, although there are others. I posted some concerns I had about Attia's high...
Read more →The latest trend I've been following with interest is the push for higher protein levels and the growing rejection of intermittent fasting. The lead character in this chapter on nutrition is Dr....
Read more →There are many ways to do the Potato Diet. A strict Potato Hack involves eating nothing but cooked and cooled potatoes. Nothing else. No fixings or even salt. This hack can be done for 3-5 days. Or...
Read more →I posted Mostly Weight Stable Regardless of Diet Part 2 this weekend. I wanted to show others that I was able to drop 40 pounds and keep it off for 4 years using both the Potato Hack and my own...
Read more →Rick Rubin was recently on the Joe Rogan podcast. He talked about how his health improved and he lost 130 pounds when he abandoned his vegan diet. > JOE: What about veganism got you that big? > >...
Read more →Back in 2013, I put together a 3-part series on PUFA. I referenced several health influencers from different camps that all agreed that excess PUFA was bad for health. - The Common Enemy in...
Read more →In my last post Seed Oils, Blood Donations, and Body Temperature, I shared new research that my frequent blood donations reduced the level of "forever toxins" in my body and could have raised my...
Read more →Back in 2015, I shared the success I had with raising my body temperature. I was able to increase it over the course of about 2 years and I've maintained that increase ever since. > 97.0 –> 97.5 –>...
Read more →In July 2020, I posted how was able to optimize my Lipid Levels in Lipid Levels on 2 (mostly) Pesco-Vegan Meals a Day. You can go to the post for the raw numbers, but the short version is my numbers...
Read more →UPDATE 2023: After reading It’s Probably Not Lithium by Natália Coelho Mendonça, I no longer consider the two writers at Slime Mold Time Mold to be credible. I still suspect that environmental toxins...
Read more →Earlier this month, I posted In Defense of Low Fat Dieting. Low-Fat diets have been slandered too much in recent years by the low-carb crowd. They can absolutely work, but the vast majority of...
Read more →Food prices are spiking and people are complaining. I'm not. The Peasant Diet that I designed back in 2016 not only will lean you out, you'll also save a lot of money on food. I wanted to post this...
Read more →Low carb diets can work. When you reduce the number of carbs you eat, you can absolutely lose weight. There are a few reasons. Most processed foods are higher in carbs and foods lower in carbs are...
Read more →For several years now I have been aware of Hyperlipid. It is a technical nutritional blog that is highly regarded, especially in the low-carb community. I've always felt there was something worth...
Read more →Because I use the 3rd party search tool by Algolia, I get a report on what the readers of this blog are searching for. The top 3 topics consistently have been Pavel Tsatsouline, the Ray Peat Diet,...
Read more →It is a common assumption that if one is overweight and wants to improve their health they need to diet. Is this a correct assumption? Reports are that between 70% and 95% of dieters who lose weight...
Read more →FireInABottle recently put out another outstanding post about the metabolic destruction that industrialized seed oil has inflicted upon the world. Humans and Hibernating Mammals React to The Same...
Read more →Long-time readers of this site know that I used the Potato Hack Diet to lose weight. There are many ways to lose weight, but few succeed in permanent fat loss. Somewhere between 70% and 95% of...
Read more →After having used a 90% pesco-vegan diet to hack my lipid levels to optimal and sun/supplementation to double my Vitamin D levels in 2 months, I've been looking for my next health test, so I had to...
Read more →In the post Lipid Levels After Going 90% Pesco-Vegan Ant asked: > I’m debating whether or not to go completely plant-based or keep some fish in. What are your thoughts on going sans animal products?...
Read more →Dr. Weil appeared on the Kevin Rose Show podcast yesterday with some immune-boosting tips to best deal with the coronavirus. I couldn't find a website with show notes, so I took my own notes, which I...
Read more →It has been 3 years since the last edition of this post series. I started this post in June 2019, but I was changing things up, so I delayed. Then I made more and more changes. I feel I'm settled for...
Read more →As someone that has had to give up gluten twice now, I want to share some wisdom with those of you that are having to deal with this issue. STOP TRYING TO REPLACE YOUR GLUTEN BASED DIET WITH THE...
Read more →I want to start this post by saying that I am not a health expert. I am a software developer with an interest in health. I read a lot. I do my best to find the truth and filter out the nonsense. But...
Read more →This is a note I am leaving for myself in the future. I know I will need to read it one day. Here goes. You need to cut back on the coffee. It is going to suck for a few days, but then the clouds in...
Read more →It has been a long time since I last posted on gluten. I thought the topic was finished for me, but unfortunately, it is not. I need to return. Or like the quote from The Godfather 3 said: Just when...
Read more →I wanted to do an updated post on getting lean and keeping the weight off. I stress the second goal as much as the first. The reason is that somewhere between 70% and 95% of people that lose weight...
Read more →Two weeks ago, I mentioned how eating less meat had reduced my iron levels to 36.0, which is the lowest I've ever had. In order to donate blood in Washington, a man needs a hematocrit level of 39.0....
Read more →I stumbled into Casa Mixteca in Burien (just south of Seattle) this weekend and discovered they offered something I have never seen on a menu before. Grasshopper (chapulines) tacos! Casa Mixteca...
Read more →As some of you know, I have been following the smartest vegans and seeing what I can learn from them. I would say that I've reduced my animal calorie consumption and increased my plant-based...
Read more →Recently, I was asked if I am still doing my Peasant Diet. Mostly. But I have shifted my focus a little. The Peasant Diet is based off cheap nutrient-dense foods that have low-calorie density. Whole...
Read more →Nutritional wars can be quite entertaining. This post is about my place in the latest battles. As many of you know, I abandoned the low-carb view of Paleo back in 2012. In the post No More Low Carb...
Read more →Wow! Has it been 6 years since my last supplement post? Before I begin with my updated views, let me say that when it comes to supplements the vast majority of us are just guessing. We are guessing...
Read more →This winter I decided to go all out on an effort to boost my immunity so I would not get sick. It failed miserably. I had more sick days this winter than any year in the past decade with the...
Read more →Spring is just starting here in Seattle, so I thought I would share my winter experience with the Potatoes and Protein Diet. For background on that diet, see: Potatoes and Protein – A No Hunger...
Read more →A few years ago, I read something Precision Nutrition posted about how the people with the best and the worst physiques tend to eat the same meals over and over. It is an interesting concept to...
Read more →Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals mentioned in this blog post. When I first arrived in Seattle, I met Erica at a local Meetup group. She...
Read more →I recently received an email asking about the best way to keep weight off after a diet. I like the question because at its root is an understanding that once you get to your ideal weight it is too...
Read more →I have an observation that I want to share about my Potatoes and Protein Diet. This may just be my experience, so I'd like your feedback if you are experiencing the same thing. There are two waves of...
Read more →In September, I posted Less Peasant, More Bodybuilder, which described how I was finally making progress in increasing my protein intake. I had shifted from eating lots of potatoes through the Potato...
Read more →Recently, I got an alarming comment on an older post informing me that potatoes are high in cadmium. As someone who has been preaching the benefits of the Potato Hack for a while, I wanted to dig...
Read more →I forgot to include this on yesterday's Fitness Updates (December 2018) post. Back in September, I was making progress on resolving some stomach issues. From Stomach Woes Update: > A few weeks ago, I...
Read more →I have received some variation of this question so many times now, that I thought I would make a post directly responding to it. That question goes something like this: > Can I add \\\\ to the...
Read more →Every so often in a conversation, I'll mention how one can get lean without feeling hunger by eating boiled potatoes. I'll get challenged on this point as most people are clueless to the fact that...
Read more →If you are new to the Fasting Mimicking Diet or the Protein Cycling Diet, check out these posts for background: - Fasting Mimicking Diet Overview - Fasting Mimicking Diet – More Questions and...
Read more →Recently, I have been considering the ethical implications of a vegetarian diet. I have several thoughts on the topic, and they will likely spill over to other blog posts, but in this one, I want to...
Read more →This is a follow up to the post Stomach Woes Have Snuck Up On Me, which I put up almost 2 months ago. Rather than just tell you my story, I want to cover how I approached the problem, so if there is...
Read more →In the last year, I have had increasing issues with stomach pain. Nothing too bad. Yet with increasing frequency. At first, I thought that the increased fiber from a peasant diet was the culprit. I...
Read more →A year ago, I was researching my own protein needs. I had just lost a lot of weight using the carb-friendly Peasant Diet that had moderate to low protein and I was figuring out what to do next. My...
Read more →The plan was to do my 4th Fasting Mimicking Diet from July 3 to July 8 and then donate blood on July 9th. Let me unpack that sentence. A Fasting Mimicking Diet is a 5-day very low protein diet...
Read more →This weekend, I read Dr. James DiNicolantonio's book The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got it All Wrong—and How Eating More Might Save Your Life. I wasn't sure I would get much value from the book since...
Read more →I adopted the Peasant Diet in 2016 after Richard Nikoley and Karl Denninger got into a feud on Twitter. You can read about that story in the post Designing a Modern Peasant Diet. The short version...
Read more →I've had this analogy I've been thinking about for a long time now regarding successfully losing weight and then keeping that weight off. It has to do with dogs and cats. Dogs are easier to...
Read more →It was just over a year ago that I decided I needed to lose 20-25 pounds. But before I started on my diet, I knew the challenge wasn't losing the weight, but keeping it off. That is where many people...
Read more →This post is a continuation of the discussion of Detoxification Notes (Science Not Woo-Woo). Correct me if I am wrong on this part, but I see a real problem with chronic low-carb diets if one is...
Read more →In the previous post, Detoxification Notes (Science Not Woo-Woo), I shared what I learned about detoxing the body from the Energy Blueprint Podcast. A brief summary would be: 1. In order to detox,...
Read more →In the previous post, Fear of a Toxic Planet, I described my views on toxins and briefly on detoxification. I said: > Toxins are stored in our body fat. The best way to reduce toxin load is to not be...
Read more →A common theme I see everywhere in the health space is how toxic our environment has become. Our food, our water, our soil, and pretty much everything is loaded with toxins that will make us sick,...
Read more →I was a bit critical of the Longevity Diet Book. Dr. Longo sold me on the merits of doing a Fasting Mimicking Diet during his interview on Found My Fitness, but I wasn't a fan of the book. I thought...
Read more →Tim Steele shared a blog post by one of my readers today on his experience with the Potato Diet. Read The Potato Hack (link down Aug 2019) on brownstudy.info. From the post: > I've tried the hack...
Read more →Last week I completed my second Fasting Mimicking Diet. Well kind of. It was my own variation of the diet inspired by Marc's comment on this blog. Background info here: - The Longevity Diet Book...
Read more →I was going to wait until spring before trying my first 5-day Fasting Mimicking Diet period, but I got impatient and went for it starting last Thursday. This post will cover my experience. For those...
Read more →Now that I have enough experience with gaining and losing a few pounds over the years, I wanted to assemble all the ideas that have worked and those that haven't. This list is my experience, which...
Read more →In previous posts, I've discussed my Peasant Diet. It is a way to use cheap unprocessed foods that are higher in nutritional quality to get lean or maintain a lean weight. The foods tend to be higher...
Read more →Last August I posted Using the Power of Story for Fat Loss, which I think is one of the more important posts on this site. The short version is that if we can wrap the complexities of an effective...
Read more →In December I posted Fasting Mimicking Diet Overview, which was a collection of notes I took from a podcast interview with Dr. Valter Longo. The short version of that post is that by engaging in a...
Read more →I've done several posts on how to use potatoes to get lean. Head over to my Potato Hack Diet page to see those posts in the proper order. This post will be me reaching for an explanation on why some...
Read more →One aspect of nutrition that I'm drawn to is the concept of cycling between two different strategies to yield better results than following just one strategy. This post is about benefits to cycling...
Read more →It has been 4 years since I did my 3-part series on the problem with PUFA (Polyunsaturated Fats) that kicked off with The Common Enemy in Nutrition. Although I have altered my opinion on many things...
Read more →The latest battle in the never-ending Carb Wars involves a narrative that the sugar lobby was suppressing scientists from publishing research that was unfavorable to sugar. As with any lobby group,...
Read more →Thanks to a tip from Pauline, I read the latest book by Lyle McDonald titled Optimal Nutrition for Injury Recovery. !Optimal Nutrition for Injury Optimal Nutrition for Injury Recovery This was an...
Read more →I have received a few emails asking for tips and advice on getting started with the Potato Hack Diet. I really think people are overthinking this one. The health and fitness community is full of...
Read more →I wanted to put up a quick post explaining how I view my own weight goals. I've tried to explain this to a few people I know and I don't think I've done a good job explaining myself. Maybe if I typed...
Read more →I wanted to provide an update on my current diet. I'm stuck at 199. For reasons I explained in this post, I think it is important that I share not only when things are going well, but when they...
Read more →One of the criticisms I got regarding The Potato Hack was that once the hack ended and normal eating resumed that I'd regain the weight I lost. My critic claimed it was a lot of effort for...
Read more →This post is a collection of notes I assembled throughout this year to help me lose weight. Although you may find value in the notes below, I'm putting this post together as a reminder to myself on...
Read more →Friends that I have known for years are baffled at how I could eat a simple peasant diet. And not just because they couldn't imagine themselves eating that way, but because they've seen how much of a...
Read more →Last November, I outlined the Peasant Diet in the post Designing a Modern Peasant Diet. At that time I had the plan I needed to lose weight, but I didn't start losing weight until this March. I...
Read more →Before I go into my recent fat loss success, I want to go back 9 years ago to the post I Don’t Want To Ride A Donkey Down The Grand Canyon! It is a short post and the details aren't that important,...
Read more →This is a continuation of my last post High Volume or High Protein Foods For Fat Loss, which made the case that high protein becomes a better strategy for fat loss than high volume as one gets...
Read more →In previous posts, I explored two successful strategies for losing fat. Those are eating foods that are high in volume and low in calories and eating foods high in protein. There are other obvious...
Read more →As I explained in my previous post, I have yet to inspire a single person outside of this blog to try the Potato Hack diet. Not even for a single day. Not even for a single meal. The people that...
Read more →I ended up doing a 4-day hack instead of 5-day. The reason was unexpected. I received a 3-day pass to a gym with a lot of nice equipment, a sauna, and a steam room. So although I was planning to hold...
Read more →I briefly touched on the calorie math of the Potato Hack in a 2015 post. In this post, I will head to the chalkboard to show you my work and teach you how to figure out your numbers. Before we begin,...
Read more →Right now I am one day behind the rest of you on The Summer Potato Hack, which Tim Steele set up for August 14-18. Today is Day 3 for me and I wanted to share that Day 2 this time was no big deal....
Read more →Shortly after I posted 5 Foods That Were Key to My Fat Loss, I realized I had forgotten to include a food I never thought I would buy, let alone become a staple. Fat-Free Plain Greek Yogurt The...
Read more →Yesterday I was thinking about all my conversations with people in the past two years about the Potato Hack and it struck me how those talks often mirrored the Five Stages of Grief - just like how...
Read more →Tim Steele, the author of The Potato Hack, has created an event called End of Summer Potato Hack. It begins tomorrow (Monday, August 14, 2017) and lasts 3 to 5 days or whatever works best for you. >...
Read more →A few posts ago, I tipped my hand that I have lost 20 pounds since March by changing my understanding of metabolism and using the power of story to keep me focused. Both of those posts are coming up,...
Read more →In previous posts, I mentioned how this year I've been thinking a lot about the role of stories when it comes to fat loss and diets in general. Stories provide easy to understand compelling...
Read more →On a blog post back in March, I said: > The funny thing is when I go through 15 years of data, I see that I was weight stable within 10% and usually 5% despite following wildly different diets. What...
Read more →One of the guiding principles I have used for many years is paying attention to what is becoming more or less popular as a way to measure how true it might be. Health and fitness trends come and go....
Read more →Several years ago I was at a potluck and one of the dishes was a vegetable soup. A friend of mine who had become a vegetarian had the soup. She enjoyed the soup and seemed to be in good spirits and...
Read more →Before I cover my recent fat loss success, I first want to close the loop on The Fat Loss Bet from early 2014. Longtime readers might recall that myself and three friends entered into a bet to each...
Read more →The deeper I get into nutrition, the more I realize I have no business blogging about it. There are nutritional researchers and bloggers online that are far more knowledgeable than me. There are also...
Read more →I want to give a hat tip to Chuck, who in the comments of my last post, asked me if my frequent blood donations have had an effect on my cold tolerance. That question rattled me, because I have...
Read more →I want to use this post to start a discussion on metabolism. I'm going to cover what I believe to be true and what I'm skeptical about. I hope to get some good comments because this is a topic I find...
Read more →After reading the latest post by Matt Stone titled Why Are Central Americans so Fat?, I wanted to clarify my usage of the term Peasant Diet. After discussing the high levels of obesity in Central...
Read more →In my previous post, I explained how I like the idea of having an expansive approach to food. Still, I also recognize that it can lead to consuming too many bad foods or too many calories. I wanted...
Read more →It has been 3 years since my last "What I Eat..." update. If you want to follow my journey on food selection, here are links to the prior editions: - What I Eat and What I Don't Eat - 2014 Edition...
Read more →About a year ago I began eating wheat on a regular basis. Not daily. Maybe 1-3 times a week. Fortunately for me I didn't experience any issues. This is great because if we go back to 2009, I was...
Read more →During my blogging hiatus, an online feud erupted between two bloggers that I have been reading for years. It was glorious to watch. My readers probably already know Richard Nikoley from...
Read more →Many people have asked me in the last year if I'm still on The Potato Diet and how it is working for me. Before I bring readers up to date, I would like everyone interested in The Potato Diet to get...
Read more →> UPDATE: The Potato Hack Diet by Tim Steele is now for sale on Amazon. It will answer all your questions. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in learning more about the Potato Diet....
Read more →Be sure to check out my Potato Hack Diet Best of Page. I had no plans to post my Week 1 results, but I wanted to share how things are going on the Potato Diet. For a background to this post see The...
Read more →Be sure to check out my Potato Hack Diet Best of Page. Earlier this month I posted No Hunger Games - A Day of Just Boiled Potatoes. It was a trial run of two days of eating just cold boiled potatoes....
Read more →Back in 2012 when FreeTheAnimal was discussing the Potato Diet, I didn't pay too much attention. I was doing my own experiment to gain weight using ice cream and dairy kefir. But this year I've been...
Read more →Last week I went back and revisited all my old posts on Intermittent Fasting. Because of the concerns, I discussed in Irresponsible Health Blogging, a few posts were edited and a few were deleted. I...
Read more →Thanks to Diana's comment, I was tipped off to the July 2014 Survival of the Smartest lecture (p1, p2). It fits in with the discussion on why Intermittent Fasting can feel good in the short term but...
Read more →Last week I was involved in two discussions on Intermittent Fasting (IF). One was extremely supportive of IF and the other highly critical. Both sides were represented by smart people and both made...
Read more →The debate on bread/gluten in the nutritional blogosphere is rather sad. On one side you have alarmists who use weak evidence to make the case that bread is toxic and on the other side you have...
Read more →I recently saw a neat graphic on Precision Nutrition. !bulkydiet From the article Here's why you're always hungry. The article goes into why we reach satiety quicker when the volume of food in the...
Read more →July 28, 2011: I sat in front of a monitor as the dentist showed me two dental cavities. They were in my wisdom teeth. On the screen, I could clearly see each cavity. April 23, 2015: A new dentist...
Read more →Last week I posted on my current issues with coffee in the post Hello Darkness My Old Friend. > ...my relationship with coffee right now is troubled. > > Coffee is now making me feel both good and...
Read more →I should be in Seattle this weekend attending the SCAA, which is the biggest coffee event of the year. It is like Comic-Con for coffee. Last year I attended three days and had a ridiculous amount of...
Read more →I was just asked how I reintroduced alcohol after a multi-year absence. Prior to giving up alcohol completely, I liked going to brew pubs and trying out the sampler trays. It wasn't something I did...
Read more →I mentioned at the end of the post Food Reward and Old School Bodybuilders that I would be testing the food reward theory for myself. There are several bloggers that get hung up on the definition of...
Read more →I wanted to respond to a comment on my post Peanuts and Resiliency from Terance. > Do you think that the resiliency/fragility argument can be applied to wheat products as well? I seem to be much less...
Read more →This is going to be a quick post about a story that just came out. From the article Shielding kids from peanuts might cause peanut allergies: > Children are much less likely to develop peanut...
Read more →The outstanding book The Low-Carb Myth makes a case for the food reward hypothesis. That is defined on Whole Health Source as: > The food reward hypothesis of obesity states that the reward and...
Read more →I still recall exactly where I was when I discovered that Gary Taubes was wrong about his insulin theory of obesity. It was January 2012, and I stayed on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California....
Read more →In the post Approaching Fat Loss Like an Investor, the concept that "eating clean" can have mixed results was briefly mentioned. What does it mean to "eat clean"? In the most simple terms, it means...
Read more →A few days ago I read a comment on 180degreehealth from Jason who is frustrated with figuring out how to lose weight. > So basically what I gather is that its pretty much impossible to lose fat....
Read more →Last September I posted 5 Issues I Had With Your Personal Paleo Code, which was my review of Chris Kresser's book. From that review: > #2 Refined Sugar is “Toxic” > > No, it is not. The fact there...
Read more →The last several years have been a wild roller coaster for the nutritional hobbyist. So many ideas that seemed like solid advice fell apart. Everywhere you look there are divided camps on what is...
Read more →I used to be like you. I used to think sugar was awful, even toxic. I avoided it as much as possible. My diet was squeaky clean. I was super lean and I thought I had it all figured out. Then I kept...
Read more →In July of this year, I got a very odd email. Someone working with Dave Asprey of the Bulletproof Exec requested permission to use my testimonial for his book. > Thank you for your recent testimonial...
Read more →Matt Stone just released a new book titled Food for Mood: Dietary and Lifestyle Interventions for Anxiety, Depression, and Other Mood Disorders. Like his other books, it is an extension of the...
Read more →I've had this thought for a while. It is an offshoot of an idea in my post Approaching Nutrition From An Investor's Mindset. > When you are investing the goal is to put your money into something...
Read more →It feels like I wrote this post once before for a similar article. This response will take a different angle. Kamal Patel's article 10 Awful Nutrition Myths Perpetuated by the Media The truth behind...
Read more →It has been two years since I updated this list. If you want to see how my diet has become less restrictive over time, let me point you to the two prior editions. - What I Eat and What I Don’t Eat...
Read more →I just finished reading Chris Kresser's book Your Personal Paleo Code. There is nothing new in this book if you are familiar with his blog or the basics of Paleo. It is a long-winded version of...
Read more →Yesterday I listened to Chris Kresser's podcast on how to gain weight on a Paleo diet. If you don't have 36 minutes, I'll summarize it quickly and then give you my thoughts. - Show starts with a...
Read more →Last December I did a 3 part series on PUFA (polyunsaturated fats). 1. The Common Enemy in Nutrition 2. The Problem with PUFA 3. Quantifying PUFA, Expert Opinion, and My Conclusion My very brief...
Read more →This is a quick update on the results from my experience trying the Tim Ferriss 30 in 30 experiment. The premise is to get 30 grams of protein consumed within 30 minutes of waking. Doing this is...
Read more →In mid-June, I decided to revisit the Tim Ferriss 30 in 30 experiment. The 30 in 30 refers to getting 30 grams of protein ingested within 30 minutes of waking. Doing this is supposed to help you...
Read more →I'm interrupting my blog vacation to tell you about an amazing diet that I stumbled upon. You can lay in bed all weekend, sleep most of it if you like and lose weight! Absolutely no exercise...
Read more →Up until Friday, my last full beer was in September 2009. When I discovered gluten was causing me issues, I stopped drinking beer. Other types of alcohol didn't really interest me, so I stopped...
Read more →The article 10 Health Myths That Just Won't Die, Debunked by Science was posted back in October, but I just saw it this morning. When I scanned the list, I mostly agreed with their conclusions or...
Read more →Oh nooz carbs, legumes and fermentation! The Paleo and Peat godz are weeping. I can feel the diabeteez and super bug mycotoxins killing me. Lordy lordy this inflammation is eating me up! Ahh!!! Must...
Read more →For what seems like years there has been this endless debate on calories. It probably will never end. On one side you have charlatans that preach certain calories in excess somehow magically won't...
Read more →My thoughts on nutrition have changed quite a bit in last few years. I was just going through the archives and I came across the post I did after my December 2011 trip to Ohio. In the post Paleo in...
Read more →I just finished reading two books on nutrition. One was excellent and the other not so much. Death By Food Pyramid !Death by Food Pyramid : How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special...
Read more →This weekend when I learned that 12 Paleo Myths by Matt Stone was available for free on Amazon Kindle until Feb 20th, I reached out to several of my Paleo friends. Although each message was...
Read more →In July 2011, I completed a one-year experiment where I took a seasonal approach to fitness and nutrition. The fitness part isn't important, but I'd like to revisit the nutrition part of that...
Read more →Yesterday I reviewed the book Eating on the Wild Side. The book is full of excellent ideas on how to increase the nutrient density in your diet by making better choices when shopping and preparing...
Read more →Yesterday I listened to an excellent podcast between Justin Manning and Richard Nikoley. It might have been the single-best hour of any health podcast I have heard. Unlike most health podcasts today...
Read more →The gluten defenders lapped up the article This Is Your Brain on Gluten by James Hamblin. Anything that conforms to their opinion that avoiding gluten makes one orthorexic is a message worth...
Read more →Two weeks ago, I asked CarbSane in the comments of her post about Robb Wolf's book what mainstream nutrition book gets it most right. > I have yet to come across a mass media diet book that gets it...
Read more →A few days ago Richard at Free The Animal posted New Free the Animal, Resistant Starch-Based Dietary Guidelines. I want to comment because I really like the direction Richard has taken Paleo. I...
Read more →This is the third post I've done on PUFA. If you missed the other ones, read The Common Enemy in Nutrition and The Problem with PUFA. I think this is an important topic, not because we haven't heard...
Read more →In my last post, The Common Enemy in Nutrition, I discussed how different nutritional camps that can't seem to agree on much, agree that the average diet is too high in polyunsaturated fats and we'd...
Read more →There are so many conflicting opinions on nutrition. What one camp finds healthy is considered unhealthy by others. The low carbers fight the high carbers. Paleo and vegetarians attack each other....
Read more →UPDATE (September 7, 2014): This product is wheat-free, not necessarily gluten free. Good news for my fellow gluten free peeps that wish to cook more Korean dishes at home. You no longer need to...
Read more →In my last post Call Me a Saturated Fat Guinea Pig, I attacked an article written by Dr. Katz which implied - without evidence - that those people that increase their intake of saturated fat would...
Read more →UPDATE 2019: My confidence in the pro-SF argument has dropped a lot in recent years. I'm currently favoring a lower fat approach, which has the effect of reducing SF levels in total. This article is...
Read more →I just finished reading How to Stop Food Cravings by Matt Stone. It is a good post, but I feel it is incomplete. To summarize his article, he feels that food cravings are a sign that we are underfed...
Read more →I want to start by saying that I greatly respect those in nutrition that come out and admit they were wrong instead of clinging to an old idea that may no longer be correct or was never correct....
Read more →On Friday September 20th I began each morning by consuming 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking. This is a fat loss strategy Tim Ferriss explained in his book The 4 Hour Body. Less than 3...
Read more →After posting both parts of Was I Wrong About Gluten?, I felt I still needed to tie everything together. Like other aspects of nutrition, when there is massive disagreement, I try to approach the...
Read more →For those who haven't read Part 1, please do so now. In it, I describe how I removed gluten from my diet and experienced positive health benefits. Then I reflected on how I became sensitive to gluten...
Read more →I've started a new experiment. This time I will be testing an idea from Tim Ferriss. Upon waking I will consume 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes. In the book The 4 Hour Body, Ferriss mentions...
Read more →Wednesday night I got a chance to listen to author David George Gordon talk about eating bugs. After the talk, I joined the bug buffet and ate some bugs myself. I've owned the 1998 edition of his...
Read more →For years I have been anti-gluten. I removed it from my diet and my skin quality improved and I got leaner effortlessly. But lately I've seen a growing backlash against the gluten backlash. Instead...
Read more →A year and a half ago I posted on the idea that the amino acid L-Tyrosine might be able to reverse or delay gray hair. L-tyrosine is used to make melanin, which gives your hair its natural color....
Read more →I wanted to bring up a topic that I see mentioned frequently on forums and comments that relate to the Ray Peat diet. Seems a lot of people experience weight gain. Last month I received this comment...
Read more →I stopped buying fish oil in 2010. I was already becoming highly skeptical that it was the miracle supplement it was supposed to be. Whenever I hear claims that we need it to fight inflammation, I'd...
Read more →Thanks to Pauline for bringing to my attention that I never shared the results of my low histamine diet from May 2012. The Low Histamine Diet was an experiment to see if histamine was playing a role...
Read more →Starting around 2008, I read and reviewed several nutritional books on this site, most of which have some popularity in the Paleo community. Although I've enjoyed experimenting with a Paleo diet...
Read more →I am a big fan of making ferments. I love my kimchi and sauerkraut. However, I have heard 4 reasons why someone may want to avoid fermented veggies. In this post, I'll do my best to explain their...
Read more →In May, I posted Thinking About Supplements - 2013 Edition. Perhaps a better title would have been Guessing About Supplements? For me and probably most consumers, when it comes to supplements, we do...
Read more →With the possible exception of diet colas, the one idea I have flip-flopped on the most is if BCAA (branch chained amino acids) are a valuable supplement. In the post Thinking About Supplements -...
Read more →Almost without exception, everyone that I know from the Paleo community loathes GMO food. The story goes something like this. Small farmers produce the organic heirloom stuff we buy at the farmers...
Read more →When I've done experiments in the past, I focus on one thing. For June 2013, I'm going to mix some past experiments together to see if I can get a synergistic effect. I'm also going to try a new...
Read more →I am back from an 8 day trip to my home state of Ohio. My last visit was in December 2011. I covered that experience in the post Paleo in Ohio - Adventures in Inflammation. In that blog entry, I...
Read more →I wrote this post two years ago but never hit publish. It got lost in the drafts. Consider this a "lost episode". In 2010, Escape the Herd alerted me to the story of a professor who proved that fat...
Read more →Last July I posted Thinking About Supplements - 2012 Edition. Although I still fancy myself as someone who is mostly anti-supplements, the evidence suggests otherwise. I do take supplements daily,...
Read more →Over the last few years, I've read numerous accounts of people who have tried different diets only to end up in worse health. Most often the diet works very well in the short term, but then things go...
Read more →Sometimes I cringe a little when I go back and read some of my earlier posts on nutrition. Not always, but sometimes I am tempted to remove a sentence or add an update. But with almost 2,000 posts on...
Read more →The biggest trend I've seen in nutritional blogs in the past year is the growing anti-Paleo movement. Unlike the 2008-2010 period, the attacks aren't coming from the conventional "whole grains are...
Read more →There is a big divide in the nutritional blogs I read about sugar. Most conventional and Paleo type blogs are still anti-sugar. Many claim that sugar is toxic, inflammatory and more likely to be...
Read more →A few days ago I mentioned that I was starting the "Turn Up the Heat" experiment, which is my attempt to increase my body temperature. Read the previous post for the background on where I got the...
Read more →It was about a year ago that I stepped on the scale at the gym and saw I weighed just 183 (my height is 6 ft 2.5 inches or 189 cm). This wasn't good. I had been weight stable at 190 for a few years...
Read more →In the last post, I used the phrase "neurotic approach to food". I want to explain this more. When we dive into nutrition and make an effort to eat healthy, regardless of what healthy means to us at...
Read more →In the past year, I've become a fan of Matt Stone at 180DegreeHealth. We agree on many things. The two primary things are we both see the neurotic approach to food and exercise as being unhealthy. My...
Read more →I was half paying attention to the FatBurningMan podcast interview when I heard Mark Sisson state he was starting a Primal Certification program. You've got to be kidding me. Has it come to this? I...
Read more →In the past few years, I've seen many nutritional bloggers attack each other. Not just their ideas, but personal attacks. As someone with strong opinions on certain topics, there have been times I...
Read more →Several times on my health journey I have changed my opinion on a nutrition topic. Part of the freedom I have as an individual is that I am not accountable to clients or some brand. I'll embrace an...
Read more →I've got three health items on my mind today. Is Dairy Kefir Anabolic? About a month ago I started making dairy kefir again. I stopped making kefir a year ago when I started getting a reaction to...
Read more →Almost three years ago in the post The Minimal Effort Approach, I outlined what I felt was different about my approach to fitness and nutrition. > Minimal Effort means discovering what is the least...
Read more →I read a lot of stuff regarding nutrition. It has been an active hobby of mine since 2008. Although it was the Paleo Diet that rekindled my interest in nutrition, today I consider myself more in the...
Read more →In my last post Not a PubMed Warrior, I explained that although I love reading a good analysis of nutritional studies from those skilled in communicating that information, I no longer waste my time...
Read more →From time to time, I throw out the phrase PubMed Warrior. It is a term I coined to describe those health bloggers and commenters that pour through research studies to find evidence to support...
Read more →I was just reminded that I never posted the outcome to My Current Experiment: 30 Days Without Any Grains. There was a data issue with this test. On September 1st, I got exposed to gluten at a...
Read more →Today is Day 1 of my most challenging self experiment to date. I am going to go the entire month of October without coffee. No decaf either. My prior record was 4 days in 1997. :o I outlined my goal...
Read more →> My name is MAS and I'm a caffeine addict. For the past few years, I have been deluding myself that my relationship with caffeine was healthy. When I mention that on a typical day I only consume 3...
Read more →In the past couple of years I've had several people tell me that they thought I was a vegetarian. I'm not. Maybe it is a Seattle thing, but they learn that I cook or make vegetable ferments and jump...
Read more →Last year I only had two servings of ice cream the entire year. I've more than made up for it this year. Around March I started eating ice cream on a weekly basis. As we moved from spring to summer,...
Read more →Let me share with you the hell I went through late Sunday night, so you never have to experience it. I was out all day Saturday and had lunch at a Greek restaurant. I had a gyro meat salad with no...
Read more →Judging from the comments on My Problem With “Eat Less Move More”, I think I did a poor job explaining my position on Eat Less, Move More. Let me summarize my view. 1. Calories do count. (Eat Less)...
Read more →If you do a Google search on the phrase "Eat Less Move More", it will return over 9 million results. If you listen to most health care professionals and personal trainers they will say that the only...
Read more →Even though I gave up gluten years ago, I still would from time to time have gluten-free grain options. In the past several months as I've increased my carbohydrate levels, I've been consuming...
Read more →Our food system is toxic, people are unhealthy and it seems health outcomes are getting worse and worse. Yet, I am optimistic that in the near future things will be better. A lot better. The positive...
Read more →There have been a few popular Weston A. Price (WAPF) bloggers who have attacked the Paleo diet. I understand some of their criticisms but dislike their techniques. I find the two diets to be highly...
Read more →I'm often asked if I juice. Not steroids, but with fruits and vegetables. The answer is I don't. I remain unconvinced that juicing offers the health benefits its fans claim. Before I get attacked in...
Read more →In the post L-Tyrosine is my NZT-48, I raved about taking L-Tyrosine to improve focus. It was an idea I got after quickly taking a quiz in the book The Mood Cure. Because the supplement was so...
Read more →Last October I posted High Satiety Paleo Friendly Foods? In that post I started a discussion about what foods delivered the most satiety at the fewest calories. The other requirements were easy...
Read more →This post is a continuation of the ideas put forth in the post Hacking Hormones in a Relationship. On a hormonal basis women are becoming more masculine and men more feminine. After watching Dr....
Read more →Over three years I watched the DVD lectures by evolutionary fitness guru Art De Vany. In those seven hours, I learned much about hormones and how they are applied to human performance. Using what I...
Read more →In the post Thinking About Supplements – 2012 Edition, I said this about protein powder. > Pure garbage. The limiting factor in gaining muscle is not protein. It is calories. I only wish I have...
Read more →It has been 2 years since my Thinking About Supplements post. If you want to know why I have an anti-supplement bias, go read that post. Despite my bias, I have spent the last year trying many...
Read more →About a year ago I had an idea for a post. I'd list and rank my worst nutritional mistakes. There would be the usual suspects, such as the vegetarian phase and The Zone Diet. Then I started thinking...
Read more →The worst diet isn't the one that doesn't work. The worst diet is the one that works extremely well in the short term but fails in the long term. The diet that never works gets discarded and the...
Read more →I'm way behind on my nutrition book summaries. In this post, I'll cover three excellent books that approach nutrition from different viewpoints that compliment each other nicely. Deep Nutrition: Why...
Read more →I am a fan of the Paleo diet. I think it is an excellent way to reboot your health and lean out. Many of the leaders in the Paleo community promote a 30 day challenge to demonstrate the benefits of...
Read more →I really need to stop talking about diet outside this blog. Even though people find my food experiments entertaining, they also fail to grasp that they are just experiments. Experiments end. The...
Read more →In the previous post Distraction Diet 3, I mentioned that I actually found a supplement that increases my ability to focus. That supplement is the amino acid L-Tyrosine. Before I explain how, I want...
Read more →Well, the day finally arrived. Yesterday morning my refrigerator had no ferments at all. For the past few weeks, I have been finishing up all my sauerkraut and kimchi in preparation for my latest...
Read more →A month or so ago I stumbled across a recommendation for using gelatin supplementation to improve sleep quality. Specifically the theory was that gelatin could minimize early morning awakenings. This...
Read more →The last time I posted on what I eat and don't eat was over two years ago. Time for an update. The biggest difference between now and then is I no longer follow a strict low...
Read more →This post is a follow-up to Loosening the Paleo Collar, where I try and determine what aspects of the Paleo diet were responsible for the benefits I experienced. Instead of following an ever...
Read more →I slowly started the Paleo diet back in 2008 and was fully on board by the end of that year. Long story short is that I leaned out and cured my rosacea. The strategies I aggresively followed in the...
Read more →Last October in the post High Satiety Paleo Friendly Foods? I outlined my problem. Right before I go to bed is when I seem to be the most hungry. I seek out foods that are calorie dense that have...
Read more →I got a comment on Facebook after I posted The Gyro Meatloaf Recipe about scaling down the recipe. The recipe is for a 3-pound meatloaf. My short answer was of course you can scale it down, but why...
Read more →UPDATE August 2024: This post is so cringe to me now. I avoid red meat almost 100% now. I just came back to this post to fix a broken link. This week my fellow Paleo bloggers went into DEFCON 1 mode...
Read more →Today I read an unfortunate sentence. From the Perfect Health Diet post Around the Web; PaleoFX Edition: > Warning: Dr Clark says that coffee is bad for people with gluten sensitivity, due to...
Read more →The hot topic on Paleo blogs these days is "the return to carbohydrates". There is a slow but growing trend of those following a Paleo diet to abandon the low-carb approach to one with moderate carb...
Read more →For months I have hesitated to post about this topic, because it is something I don't understand. In late 2008, I began to get a noticeable amount of gray hair. Not just on the sideburns, but...
Read more →In the post Hunting Headaches: Remaining Suspects in Early 2012, I listed a few ideas to test that might be causing my late night headaches. Idea #2 was histamines in food. It is unfortunate that...
Read more →What reignited my passion for nutrition in June 2007 had nothing to do with fat loss or food intolerance. It all started with me getting sick. I was living in San Diego and I just came down with a...
Read more →For the past year I've been trying to figure out the mystery on why some of the glass canning jars I put in the freezer shatter and others don't. At first I thought I overfilled the jars with too...
Read more →I completed my 30-day elimination test with nuts. At the end of the 30 days, I reintroduced almonds, pistachios, cashews, and pecans. The result is I have zero issues with nuts. This is what I...
Read more →I am back from my 9 day trip to Central Ohio. When I last visited Ohio 3 years ago, I wasn't full Paleo/Primal. My focus back then was on reducing bread, not eliminating it. I also was not paying...
Read more →About a month ago I started brainstorming about food. I wanted a food that was loaded with saturated fat, cheap, portable and preferably good tasting. If you are unclear on why someone would seek out...
Read more →Last night I rendered my first batch of goat fat. I scored a 6 pound bag at the Ballard Farmers Market for $12. I used the same technique for rendering that I use for lard and beef tallow. The color...
Read more →Today when I was finished rendering tallow in my Crock Pot, I attempted to filter it using a coffee filter. In the past, this has worked. But for some odd reason today the tallow did not want to go...
Read more →I first learned about the Paleo diet in December 2007 when I read Art De Vany's original essay. Back then there were few resources to get you started. Not anymore. There are several books and...
Read more →Last week I posted about how I injured my back in the gym. It was a serious injury. It was the kind of injury that would have taken a few weeks to fully recover from in the past. I was 90% recovered...
Read more →In the past four years, I've probably been to close to 100 tea tasting events. One topic that pops up on a regular basis is the claim that tea will promote fat loss and prevent cancer. I used to eat...
Read more →My next 30 Day elimination test will be nuts. Starting on October 29th, I will go 30 days without any nuts or nut butters. Then I will reintroduce nuts, probably almonds, for a period of 4 days and...
Read more →I just finished watching Fermentation Workshop with Sandor Ellix Katz twice. If you are interested in getting started with fermented vegetables or kefir, it is must see. !Fermentation Workshop with...
Read more →Earlier this week someone asked me if I had seen the humongous cabbage at Central Market. They were being sold as Kraut Cabbage for 25 cents a pound. I had to see just how large they were. At first I...
Read more →It has been a little over 3 years since I started the practice of Intermittent Fasting. On the list of positive steps I've taken to improve my health, only removing wheat has yielded greater...
Read more →A few weeks ago I came to the obvious conclusion that making fermented vegetables was a hobby that I was not going to get tired of anytime soon. I also realized that I was eating and gifting these...
Read more →I think I can divide my Paleo journey into 3 stages. Stage #1 Personal Development Weight loss, better skin, more energy, and a stronger immune system mostly arrived in the first two years following...
Read more →I need some help. Between dinner and sleep, I get hungry. Sometimes very hungry. If I don't eat foods with high satiety then I'll either have trouble falling asleep or I'll wake up hungry. My go-to...
Read more →I started doing Intermittent Fasting over three years ago. My strategy has always been to just deal with the hunger. If you ignore it, it goes away. When I first began fasting, I'd think about my...
Read more →For the past 30 years, whole wheat has been considered the staple of a heart-healthy diet. This may be the biggest lie in nutrition today. Not only is wheat not healthy, but I also discovered that...
Read more →Although I messed up a few times, which forced me to restart the test, I have now completed a 30 Day No Dairy test. One of the methods to test to see if dairy is a problem is to completely eliminate...
Read more →Recently someone told me my approach to nutrition and fitness was too extreme and not practical. I suppose if you took everything that I do together and ranked them equally it could look...
Read more →I just read a fascinating diet book that approaches fat loss by adjusting the body's fat set point by weakening the signal between calories and flavor. !The Shangri-La Diet: The No Hunger Eat...
Read more →My vegetable ferments are taking over. !veggie-ferments Back Row: Ghost Pepper Sauerkraut, Green Cabbage kimchi. Front Row: Smoked Alderwood Salt Sauerkraut, Carrot and Ginger (2), more Green Cabbage...
Read more →This has been a rough summer for me. Things haven't turned out as I expected. In addition to personal and financial setbacks, I still have not solved the riddle of my headaches. When I began actively...
Read more →My dietary tweaking over the past three years has led me to discover what many others in the elite fitness community have already discovered. That is the superiority of a cyclical approach to fitness...
Read more →I completed another 30 Day experiment. This time I went 30 days without any aged cheese. This restricted me to just cottage cheese and cream cheese. All other types of cheese were eliminated during...
Read more →About a year ago I decided to alter my diet and activity level based upon the season. I was motivated by the differences I saw in the approaches to paleolithic diets. Some of my nutritional mentors...
Read more →A year ago I shared some photos of food projects I was working on in the post Nourishing Kitchen. Here are some more. Today I finished a Goat Bone Stock. I did it exactly like I described in my...
Read more →I read a lot of nutritional blogs and it seems a growing topic is the disagreement on the role of carbohydrates in the diet. Some are adamant about low-carb and others are equally adamant against...
Read more →As I embark on my latest strategy to eliminate my headaches, the one thing I see repeated over and over is that liver is to be avoided, because it contains high levels of tyramine. Tyramine is a...
Read more →It has been three months since my Leangains review. Before I go into my latest strategy, I want to address some questions I got regarding my mixed review of the 16-hour daily fasts promoted by...
Read more →I just received a cool list from frequent commenter GWhitney. This is his list of the best-of-the-best foods, which he calls High Velocity Super Warrior Foods. Here they are: - Bone broth - Liver...
Read more →In the past year, I've read or skimmed numerous books from the library on fermentation. Most were OK. None of them seemed complete. Until now. !The Joy of Pickling: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for...
Read more →After the radiation story hit, I went out and got a bunch of sea veggies. Then I located a book with ideas on how to cook with them. !Vegetables from the Sea: Everyday Cooking with Sea Greens...
Read more →I'm not a health professional, but I have written a lot about Intermittent Fasting. Although I feel it can be healthy for some individuals, it isn't for everyone. Since I started IF almost three...
Read more →Everywhere I go these days there seem to be more and more gluten-free options. Grocery stores are carrying more and more gluten-free options. Many restaurants now carry gluten-free options on their...
Read more →Until last week, I thought I understood Vitamin D. Then I attended a presentation by Green Pasture and was introduced to the Vitamin D Handbook: Structures, Synonyms, and Properties. This is an...
Read more →In previous posts, I have celebrated how lean you will get once you eliminate bread from your diet. In the post Be Your Own Dermatologist, I even covered how removing grains could clear up skin...
Read more →From about the time I was in college until two years ago I would occasionally get rosacea outbreaks on my cheeks and forehead. Rosacea is a skin condition that manifests as redness. It is mostly just...
Read more →Does anyone recall the cigar fad from the mid-1990s? Cigar bars popped up. Celebrities were photographed smoking them. Cigarettes were out and cigars were in. Whenever someone brought up health...
Read more →Regular readers of this site know that I am a huge fan of kimchi. I love eating it and love making it. It is a nutritional powerhouse and I credit it with restoring my gut flora and greatly improving...
Read more →Almost a month ago I started a new 30 Day experiment of going a month without any sugar or fruit. My goal was to once and forever determine if there was a link between sugar and my frequent...
Read more →I just finished reading the slimmer version of Good Calories, Bad Calories. !Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (Borzoi Books) Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (Borzoi Books) by Gary...
Read more →It appears some trace radiation from the Japan nuclear accident has arrived here in Seattle. From the Washington State Department of Health: > A Department of Health air monitor in Seattle has...
Read more →A new season means a new installment for my seasonal approach series to nutrition and fitness. Last year I was inspired to see what would happen if I altered my diet and activity based off the...
Read more →Now that spring has arrived, I want to go back and review the goals outlined in my post Winter Strategies for Nutrition and Fitness. My general thesis is that winter has the potential to be the best...
Read more →Just two day ago I posted Intermittent Fasting 70 Day Review of the Leangains Method. In that post, I openly asked why the first month was so successful, but the gains stopped and reversed in the...
Read more →For all my friends that still can't bring themselves to eat healthy pastured beef liver, I have the solution. How about making your own creamy pate? I did it earlier this week. It was very easy. I...
Read more →Now that the paleo diet is becoming more mainstream, I thought I would put together a list ranking the paleo books. This list is for people new to the diet, not my fellow nutritional geeks. Since I...
Read more →About a year ago, I reported that I was experimenting with the Leangains 16 hour intermittent fasting method. I wasn't strict with it. I did it about 3 days a week. My initial thoughts were: >...
Read more →I love a good experiment and I'm about to start a new one. I've done 30 days without sugar and 30 days without fruit, but not at the same time. Yesterday I realized that if I really want to test the...
Read more →In December, the site Latest in Paleo (then called This Week in Paleo) awarded this blog the "Paleo Blog of the Week" (episode 14). It was quite an honor to see this site on the same list as so many...
Read more →For those new to the site, I am currently testing a nutritional strategy that I call the seasonal approach. In the post Winter Strategies For Nutrition and Fitness, I outlined a list of goals I had...
Read more →Finally finished reading it. !The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and...
Read more →This past Saturday morning, I met up with some friends at a local tea shop. The woman to my direct left was just starting to come down with a cold. I didn't realize it at first, but I wasn't...
Read more →Going from a regular diet to paleo in one move is going to be hard for most people. Especially those without a track record of dietary success. If you've been reluctant to embrace a paleo diet...
Read more →A big topic in the paleo community is the desire to spread the word and get others to adopt a more evolutionary diet. In a Robb Wolf podcast (E55 of the Paleo Solution), a listener asked about...
Read more →In November 2008 I bought and read the e-book Eat Stop Eat. This book is considered in fitness circles to be the definitive guide to Intermittent Fasting. The author Brad Pilon was the first to my...
Read more →This book is considered a masterpiece in the study of human nutrition. !Nutrition and Physical Degeneration Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price was published in 1939 and might be...
Read more →After the 2004 election I became post-political. I'll discuss it in depth in a future post, but in short it means that I've withdrawn my interest in supporting a system where we are mobilized to vote...
Read more →At the start of autumn, I posted Fall Strategies For Nutrition and Fitness, where I outlined my seasonal approach to a low-carb/paleo diet. > The premise is that our bodies have growth and repair...
Read more →The publisher of Art De Vany's book was kind enough to send me an advance copy of The New Evolution Diet to read and review. It will be released tomorrow. !The New Evolution Diet: What Our...
Read more →Well fall is almost over, so I thought I provide an update on my Fall Strategies For Nutrition and Fitness post. This was the post that outlined how I would tweak my food and exercise under my...
Read more →I am not a big believer in supplements. For the most part, I see the supplement industry as a bunch of charlatans selling the modern version of snake oil. The supplement industry profits by...
Read more →Over the years, I've gone from a standard American diet to a long fling with vegetarianism to a mostly paleolithic diet. This post is a visual guide to how I made spaghetti during each period....
Read more →My nutritional mentors all have variations on what they believe is the optimal diet. This leads to endless debates among people smarter than me. I have no desire to jump into those nutritional...
Read more →When we talk about fitness and nutrition, we label activities and food as differing degrees of healthy and unhealthy. It doesn't explain everything though. I have seen people who eat poorly or do...
Read more →The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet by Robb Wolf starts off with a stellar detailed look at macronutrients, hormones, and then he goes after grains. The Paleo Solution makes the best case I...
Read more →2019 UPDATE: This post has not aged well. There is a lot I would remove or change. It is only remaining on the site for archival purposes. It is true that I no longer follow a vegetarian diet. It...
Read more →This morning I looked around my kitchen and saw just how far down the path of nourishing food I've gone. Nourishing is a term I borrowed from the Sally Fallon book Nourishing Traditions. It is a...
Read more →MAY 2019: This video debunked many of the claims in The Vegetarian Myth. I wish this book was around when I first looked into starting a vegetarian diet. !The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and...
Read more →I love learning about nutrition and I love sharing what I've learned with others. What I don't want to do is attack another person's diet as being wrong. There are a couple of reasons. The first is...
Read more →In the past two weeks I have heard the disappointed voices of a few friends that were doing so well on their diets until summer came. Then all their progress stalled. I'm here to offer some...
Read more →For the past two years, I have done numerous posts on nutritional topics. I've documented and shared the huge improvements in my health that I've had once I adopted a lower-carbohydrate and more...
Read more →I am a fan of doing experiments on nutrition and fitness. And although I understand most people do not share my enthusiasm, if I were to pick a single 30 day experiment for mankind it would be to go...
Read more →Last year I made pickles for the first time. The problem was it wasn't a true Lacto-fermentation. All I did was dump pickling cucumbers into old pickle juice. Bathing cucumbers in pickling juice is...
Read more →I had the pleasure of eating some crickets on Sunday. They were prepared and cooked in style used in Oaxaca, Mexico. Not sure what spices were used, but they were delicious. I could eat a full bag...
Read more →I've been preaching the gospel of low carbohydrate diets now for two years and intermittent fasting for almost as long. Several people I know have gotten much leaner following either or both...
Read more →I completed my 30 Days Without Sugar challenge. It wasn't hard at all. Actually it was quite easy and it just got easier. The purpose of the test was to see if I could detect any positive health...
Read more →In a recent podcast, paleo proponent Robb Wolf rattled off a list of books he recommended. This was mentioned. !Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival by T. S....
Read more → Photo by Joe Lanman Yesterday I started a quest to go 30 days with no sugar. I eat pretty clean already, but I do have the...
Read more →Why make 2 pounds of kimchi, when you can make 6? 
Read more →I recently was asked for advice to get started on eating healthy. Both people who wanted help had no experience cooking, but each had a desire to improve their diet. Although there are lots of...
Read more →I've received a few requests asking me what foods I eat and which ones I avoid. I slapped a date on this post because I expect it to change over time. Although I don't expect major changes, there...
Read more →This weekend I slipped on some gardening gloves, grabbed a pair of scissors and went foraging for nettles. Not sure about the legality of taking a bag of nettles out of a Seattle park, but they sure...
Read more →Until I had Sam Adams, I didn't believe that beer could taste good. It opened my eyes to a world of beer in a way that local roasted coffee opened my eyes to quality coffee. When I arrived in...
Read more →Several of my friends have had success with Intermittent Fasting. They lose weight and feel great, but not everyone succeeds. I'm going to list the reasons that I have witnessed that caused...
Read more →In 2006, I did two nutritional posts titled Cleaning Up My Diet 1 and Cleaning Up My Diet 2. Boy did I get some things wrong. Not quite a nutritional mullet, but close. Usually I attack others, such...
Read more →I have done a few posts where I discussed how after I loaded up my diet with foods that were anti-viral and anti-bacterial, I stopped getting sick. In the post Health Goals - Last Year and Today, I...
Read more →After Obama nominated a tax cheat to run the United States Treasury, who could have imagined that we'd get a more ironic nomination. The new Surgeon General is Regina Benjamin and her prime health...
Read more →\\ 2016 UPDATE: I was SO WRONG about this book. Taubes is a fraud. See the critical review here. \\\ Remember that Top 5 Diet Books post I wrote back in July? All those books can take a HUGE step...
Read more →Earlier this week, I was having a discussion on nutrition with some friends. I disclosed my latest experiment, which is still too early to blog about at this time. The response I got was, "how lean...
Read more →After posting Carbohydrate Observations From Malaysia, I returned to the streets of Kuala Lumpur to look for more patterns to support or refute by observations. The first thing I want to clarify is...
Read more →\ Note that my Malaysian observations were all inside Kuala Lumpur. Things may be different outside the city. Malaysia has a problem that its neighbor Thailand doesn't: obesity. Wherever I went in...
Read more →Can you make sushi with canned fish? Yes. !roasted-eel !roasted-eel-sushi --- Comments Paul November 8 at 2009 at 12:21 AM even though i've had eel rolls and liked them. I've caught too many of them...
Read more →Yesterday I made the following dish for lunch. - Broiled Wild Salmon with a mayo seal. - Fresh cut green beans cooked with onions, garlic and hot peppers in tallow rendered from a grass-fed cow....
Read more →The author of The Warrior Diet released a follow-up book that directly addresses estrogenic foods. !The Anti-Estrogenic Diet: How Estrogenic Foods and Chemicals Are Making You Fat and Sick The...
Read more →I frequently head to Seattle's International District (aka Chinatown) to buy groceries. Some of my favorite dishes that I like to make are Asian based. The more I learn about the ecological disaster...
Read more →Last week when I realized that I was starting to get sick from the common cold, I decided to run an experiment on myself. You know how I love a good experiment. Anyway, I wanted to disprove the old...
Read more →I have no love for baseball. Not only is the game boring, but they have a childish view of steroids that I don't have the energy to debate at this time. This post is about a story I saw on the cover...
Read more →I made another dish where the goal was vegetable variety. !stir-fry 1. garlic \ 2. red onion 3. red pepper 4. green chili pepper 5. yellow pepper 6. kale, both steam and leaf \ 7. green beans...
Read more →The Precision Nutrition site just posted a great article on fat loss lessons called Why You're Not Lean Yet. My first thought was - oh great, not another get lean list. But I really like this list...
Read more →Last night I watched the documentary Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America's Greatest Threat. Although I will give this film a slight thumbs-up, it has problems. Killer at Large tries to tackle...
Read more →The one thing almost every diet book has in common is they attack other diet books. It almost seems like a prerequisite. The reader must be told their weight problem was the fault of misinformed or...
Read more →The is my 4th post on Intermittent Fasting. For a background, I refer you to these 3 posts. - Intermittent Fasting - Fears and Motivations - Intermittent Fasting - Adventures in Not Eating - ...
Read more →In earlier posts, I covered how cold weather exposure may trigger a fat loss response by activating brown adipose tissue (BAT). It may also lead to muscle gains. There isn't much information on this,...
Read more →This a random collection of thoughts I have after almost 5 months of Intermittent Fasting. This is not medical advice. You are responsible for your own health. Before I could go the full 21-22 hours...
Read more →In the previous post Intermittent Fasting - Fears and Motivations, I mentioned that I had started experimenting with Intermittent Fasting (IF). > In the end, I decided that I needed to know if...
Read more →A little over a year ago, I started seriously reading about Intermittent Fasting (aka IF). The Wikipedia definition of Intermittent Fasting is: > Intermittent fasting (IF) is a pattern of eating that...
Read more →About five years ago, I read the first edition of The Warrior Diet. At the time I just shook my head thinking that this diet would not only be impossibly hard to follow but that it couldn't be true....
Read more →While I was walking around New Orleans, I stumbled into a store and started flipping through the cookbooks. Forgive me for being a newbie, but I found a line of cookbooks that I adored. The store was...
Read more →Ori Hofmekler, the author of The Warrior Diet, is a fan of having coffee instead of food prior to a workout. From the chapter on exercising he writes: > Good, fresh coffee is a wonderful natural...
Read more →When I was in college, one of the many jobs I had was loading trucks for UPS. Boxes would move throughout the warehouse on a series of conveyor belts. The dock I worked on had five 18-wheeler trucks....
Read more →The last book I read was a little too tough to follow at times, so I backed it off a bit and read a book that covered the basics of hormones and metabolism. !Hormonal Balance: Understanding Hormones,...
Read more →I just finished reading a great book on food and society. !Waistland: The (R)Evolutionary Crisis Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis Waistland: The (R)Evolutionary Crisis Behind Our Weight and...
Read more →Paul over at Infectious Greed posted this cool graphic on how Americans spent their food dollar in 1955 vs today. !restaurantsfood Infectious Greed is a financial site, but I couldn't help but think...
Read more →Earlier this week I got some good natured ribbing from friends about the fact that I'm testing non-mainstream fitness and nutritional ideas on myself. I've become a one man experiment in my quest to...
Read more →During Thanksgiving, ThanksMAS and the Seattle Snowpocalypse, I was exposed to sick people. On each of the three occasions, I started to develop slight symptoms the next day. Instead of surrendering...
Read more →This week T-Nation released a great article titled My 8 "Ah-Ha!" Moments by Chris Shugart. In fitness you consume data, try and test ideas, filter out the noise, make progress, have plateaus and...
Read more →I never would have read a book with this title unless it was written by my nutritional mentor Jonny Bowden. !Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising Unbiased Truth about What Treatments...
Read more →I keep stumbling on the name Paul Chek when reading fitness articles, so I decided to read his book. !How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! by Paul Chek was very nicely...
Read more →Back in August, in the post I Can't Quit You Coke Zero I confessed my reluctant love for Coke Zero. I had learned how repeatedly fooling the brain with low/no calorie sweeteners may interfere with...
Read more →In the post I Don't Like the Nightlife, I confessed that I probably have the type of insomnia called early-morning awakening. > There is also a type of insomnia called early-morning awakening. It...
Read more →Really I tried. About two years ago I discovered Coke Zero. A zero-calorie version of Coke that didn't taste like a diet drink. It was amazing. After going years without drinking any soft drinks, I...
Read more →Last October after reading SuperFoods RX, I wondered if I could manipulate my diet to reduce the number of days I would get sick. If I was getting sick because my immune system was getting...
Read more →Some of you may be wondering why I've developed a sudden interest in cooking. I know quite a few single people in Seattle and they tend to find cooking to be a tedious chore. > Why bother going...
Read more →It is so easy to see why this book was recommended to me by so many people. At several points in the book it looked as if I were reading my own thoughts and ideas on food and nutrition. !In Defense...
Read more →Over the past year, many books have been recommended to me, but the one cited most often was a book about food. Several people told me that I HAD TO READ this book. Well, I finally did and boy were...
Read more →As early as I can remember I've always had a deep interest in nutrition. During college this interest had me pursuing more knowledge on the topic. Having not developed the critical analysis skills I...
Read more →When I first picked up this book I didn't think it would hold that many interesting ideas about the psychology of eating. I was wrong. !Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think Mindless Eating:...
Read more →About five years ago I read an interesting book on what was basically a modern caveman diet. When I finished I came to the conclusion the diet was way too difficult to follow in the modern world....
Read more →I'm so tired of people singing the praises of a particular diet as the one true way to lose weight. Diet choice has become the new religion. Most of the time when I revisit a diet evangelist months...
Read more →Last October, I devoured the book SuperFoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life. It was the book I wish I had back in college when I first got interested in nutrition. That was before I...
Read more →In the post Are These the 14 SuperFoods? I confessed that I don't like oranges. Some of you already know this story. For the rest of you, enjoy the tale of how I lost my love for oranges during the...
Read more →I just finished reading an outstanding nutrition book on what are considered the best foods you can eat. Back in college I read a lot of nutrition books and built a diet framework with that...
Read more →Last year when I visited Brazil one thing had me puzzled: How could the people be so lean when a large amount of the food was either fried or loaded with sugar? The answer I came up with at the time...
Read more →For the most part I eat a clean diet. Upon closer inspection I found a few things that I need to eliminate. > Mayonnaise - It's the glue that holds my albacore tuna together. Sadly it's mostly low...
Read more →Two weeks I went over the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Nutritional Programs and patted myself on the back for following the rules most of the time. Well I may have been too quick to give myself a...
Read more →The other day I was reviewing John Berardi's 7 Habits of Highly Effective Nutritional Programs. For the most part I follow the 7 habits, but not always to degree I should. Below are the 7 habits and...
Read more →I always find it interesting to measure my weight and bodyfat percentage before and after a vacation. Stepping away from my standard diet and exercise routine can shock my system into either weight...
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