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Lion Diet

mattie

Senior Member
Messages
375
Eat plants! Save animals!
  • ANIMAL WELFARE: Eating meat requires the death of a living being. Eating dairy usually involves animals being separated from their children, causing distress to both mother and calf. Dairy cattle frequently develop bovine mastitis (a painful infection and inflammation of the udders), and factory farmed animals are kept in cramped conditions and pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones in order to maximise profit. Unlike wild animals, humans do not require meat to survive (and definitely not dairy products from other animals). Eating meat is a choice and, as moral actors, the correct choice is surely to give up meat and dairy.
  • ENVIRONMENT: When cows eat grass, microbes in their gut break down their meal and produce methane. This methane (a greenhouse gas) is released into the atmosphere via the magic of cow burps and farts, making livestock farming one of the biggest contributors to global warming. Factor in deforestation from land clearance, biodiversity loss, and air and water pollution, and animal agriculture is terrible for the environment.
  • HEALTH: Vegan diets tend to be rich in foods that have proven health benefits: fresh fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, beans and pulses. A vegan diet is typically higher in fibre, and lower in cholesterol, protein, calcium and salt compared to a non-vegan diet. Research suggests that vegans may have a lower risk of heart disease than non-vegans.
 
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Jyoti

Senior Member
Messages
3,423
I am convinced that some humans do indeed thrive on a diet consisting of animals/products. I do not doubt @GreenEdge's success, and I personally know a couple of others who seem to be on the same hopeful path.

I also know that for whatever reason, I do not. Perhaps it is the make-up of my particular physiology. But just as likely, it is the first two points that Mattie has made. How can I actually digest dead animals, aware of the cost and suffering to the animals themselves and to the planet and all of us who live on it? I have never been able to.

And I guess at this point, I wouldn't want to. It's a choice.
 

mattie

Senior Member
Messages
375
https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/nutr...nswer-examining-the-carnivore-and-lion-diets/

TikTok is at it again. Another new fad diet has made its way to our social media feeds: the Lion Diet. This newest trend goes against (almost all) nutrition guidelines by eliminating (almost all) foods. And while a short-term elimination challenge may help some people identify gastrointestinal triggers, there are much more appropriate and sustainable strategies out there.

What is the Lion Diet and why is it used?​

According to its website, the Lion Diet is described as a whole food elimination diet used to treat leaky gut. Allegedly offering the body “all the nutrients it needs,” this diet includes ruminant meat, salt and water. Ruminant meat comes from animals that chew their cud, like cows, buffaloes, sheep, goats and deer.

The all-meat diet targets consumers with illness and those who are on medications. It claims to put “illness into remission.” After you’re feeling better, you can reintroduce a wider array of foods “identifying what your body likes and doesn’t like.”

These types of statements, especially without any links or references to peer-reviewed literature (though the blogger’s personal Amazon store happens to be clickable …) not only confuse readers, but potentially put their health at further risk by encouraging an unsustainable, unproven and unbalanced diet.

Click to read full article from Mayo Clinic

we’re not lions.
promoting these dangerous and extremely immoral diets is bad..
 
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GreenEdge

Senior Member
Messages
667
Location
Brisbane, Australia
As a gift, I give you this very interesting interview with someone who was on the inside of the vegan movement for much of her life and was able to see the damage that it caused to her health and the environment first hand.

 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
18,075
Isn't the carnivore diet just a slightly more extreme version of the ketogenic diet? The ketogenic diet allows some plant-based foods in moderation, such as salads, cruciferous vegetables, nuts, etc. Whereas the carnivore diet just consists of just meat and dairy, and completely eliminates plant-based foods.

What advantages does the carnivore diet have over the known medical advantages of the ketogenic diet?

The ketogenic diet can help with medical conditions such as epilepsy and ADHD, for example. Can the carnivore diet help these conditions even more?
 
Messages
91
Isn't the carnivore diet just a slightly more extreme version of the ketogenic diet? The ketogenic diet allows some plant-based foods in moderation, such as salads, cruciferous vegetables, nuts, etc. Whereas the carnivore diet just consists of just meat and dairy, and completely eliminates plant-based foods.

What advantages does the carnivore diet have over the known medical advantages of the ketogenic diet?

The ketogenic diet can help with medical conditions such as epilepsy and ADHD, for example. Can the carnivore diet help these conditions even more?

Hanging out in places like https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb and the facebook group Lion Diet, I see a lot of anecdotes of people saying they did keto and felt a lot better but still experienced symptoms. They tried carnivore and felt even better. And some say they then tried Lion and felt even better than that.

Or keto had no effect but carnivore helped.

The following are just a few examples from a quick search of the zerocarb subreddit, using the searches "keto" and "keto adhd".

I found Keto did not make a difference in my depression or anxiety. Carnivore knocked both out entirely. It was like night and day.

That doesn't mean everyone will have the same response. But dropping veg and veg oils has made all the difference for my mental health.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/omi8NcMmGR
I'm doing ZC because eating fruit and veg rip my guts up - I have Crohns disease. Keto was good but not quite good enough. So yes, I noticed a benefit... but that wasn't the answer you are looking for, right?

I switched from keto to ZC, because I thought ZC would help me break a weightloss stall (it did). However, I never really felt the supposed benefits of Keto (increased energy, etc); since switching to ZC I've noticed that I have increased energy, better quality sleep, and a better mood.
...

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/hfozUNcDHg
...

...
I personally found that ZC did far more for my anxiety than keto ever did, the difference was night and day.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/ZJVTBsUj5S
I used to struggle with depression. I've tried tons of different supplements, intense exercise, yoga, meditation retreats. All that stuff is great, but nothing has had a more profound effect on my mental health than switching over to eating exclusively meat. My mood is positive, relaxed, upbeat. I'm genuinely happy to be alive and feeling well. I feel balanced and capable of regulating my emotions.

Keto seemed to have only a minor benefit to my depressive symptoms this past winter. Take the leap and try carnivore out for a few weeks!

Red meats are best because they have more fat and are more satiating than chicken and tuna and most cuts of pork. I eat about 75% beef and 25% ( chicken, eggs and bacon ).

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/XNwyC9ROae
I had IBS, CFS (bedbound) and depression and for me, going zero carb was ultimately the solution. I took quite a while to get there though. I spent years on keto, experimenting with different foods. I then did meat+veggies for a while and felt about 80% healthy. Cutting out the veggies got me to 100%. Now I'm fully active 16 hrs/day, getting into crossfit and paramotoring. Didn't happen overnight but very much worth the struggle.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/SIWbS0dMTj
I had a great many of your same symptoms and then some more, as well. I tried a lot of diets for the last 40 years trying to “eat healthy” but I just got sicker. For 18 years it was the worst, just daily miserable symptoms that stole the life out of life. Then I got radical and tried keto. I lost weight (until I stalled hard) but it didn’t help my health issues. Then I went carnivore and I noticed mental health benefits very early, and then on Day 40 is when I felt like I got my life back. It’s been two years and unfortunately I do go backwards in symptoms but that’s only because I compromise. And even then, I still feel better than I have in 18 years.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/fmXfRzlXYf
Maybe seborrhoeic dermatitis. I'd been having flare ups for as long as I can remember, but none after switching from keto to 100% animal sourced.

Then after 1½ yr of that I started adding onions leek mushrooms etc to my fatty beef it returned. Didn't much think of it, used ketoconazol cream to keep it contained, but after once more dropping the plants the excema disappeared. Hmmm..

Correlation isn't causation, but it sure looks like there's something there

Breathlessness from hypercapnia due to emphysema was reduced by, like, a lot on a ketogenic diet. It hasn't gotten worse even though I'm less deep in ketosis.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/6WEtAyUJWh
Arthritis, asthma, IBS and ADHD.

Keto solved IBS, and I would say reduced asthma and arthritis 85% to 95% but I have not had a symptom since I started zero carb.

The ADHD is improved but not fixed, also I am not on meds so there is that.

I was also stalled and this restarted the weight loss.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/IXywMGCFhd
[What health issues has carnivore improved or resolved for you?]

Joints problems (almost got one ankle replaced)
Seborrhoeic dermatitis
Asthma
Epilepsy
Huge stomach pain and bloating
Constant fatigue during the day
Completelly wiped out a lot of mid to moderate allergies that I had regularly.

[How long until the seborrheic dermatitis was gone?]

I would say in 2-3 weeks it was gone 80% probably, this while going 100% carnivore. I tried keto before and there was improvements in all those aspects, but if i have to put a number, it would probably be 40%.

In the following months it was gone completely .


This is a snippet from the experience of Mikhaila Fuller (formerly Mikhaila Peterson), who popularized the lion diet. Much more detail on her many severe conditions in the full story.

I slowly cut out the carbier and carbier foods as I found they made this sense of doom and my arthritis worse. 4 months into breastfeeding I went from my diet of meat, and at that point just lettuce, to just meat. I knew meat didn’t make me react and give me arthritis. The lingering joint pain I had went away in a few weeks. The itch went away in the same span of time. Within 6 weeks I stopped crying in the morning. 5 months later my lingering anxiety went away.

...

My brain and gut were so damaged that an all beef or ruminant meat (like lamb and bison) diet, what I call the Lion Diet, was all I could tolerate.

Edit: And the popular, unproven theory is that carnivore works by eliminating problem chemicals from plants, and not just because it is even less carbs than regular keto.

And the theory with lion over carnivore is that ruminants such as cows, with their multiple stomach digestion, process the plants they eat much more than non-ruminants like pigs or chickens, and leave fewer of these chemicals in the meat.
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
18,075
Hanging out in places like https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb and the facebook group Lion Diet, I see a lot of anecdotes of people saying they did keto and felt a lot better but still experienced symptoms. They tried carnivore and felt even better. And some say they then tried Lion and felt even better than that.

And the popular, unproven theory is that carnivore works by eliminating problem chemicals from plants, and not just because it is even less carbs than regular keto.

Interesting. I wonder if this might have anything to do with feeding intestinal bacteria? It says here the carnivore diet does not provide gut bacteria with carbohydrates and fermentable fibres, and this stops bacterial overgrowth.

From your reading of these carnivore diet forums, is there any consensus for how long it takes for the benefits to appear? Are we talking days, weeks or months?

I've always been put off trying even just the keto diet, because I cannot imagine just eating nothing but meat, meat and more meat. I might be able to manage pure meat for a few days, to see if any health benefits manifested in that short timeframe. But I doubt if I could keep to meat only for weeks or months.


One crazy idea I had though was to stop eating all sugars and carbohydrates, but spray my body skin from head to toe with a sugar solution, so that the sugar will be absorbed transdermally. That way, you will get your carb energy requirements, whilst still starving the gut bacteria of sugar.
 
Messages
91
From your reading of these carnivore diet forums, is there any consensus for how long it takes for the benefits to appear? Are we talking days, weeks or months?

It seems to vary, which just the subset of comments above show:

Then I went carnivore and I noticed mental health benefits very early, and then on Day 40 is when I felt like I got my life back.
I would say in 2-3 weeks it was gone 80% probably, this while going 100% carnivore. I tried keto before and there was improvements in all those aspects, but if i have to put a number, it would probably be 40%.

In the following months it was gone completely .

The lingering joint pain I had went away in a few weeks. The itch went away in the same span of time. Within 6 weeks I stopped crying in the morning. 5 months later my lingering anxiety went away.

Some more that talk about time:

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/aLZ70uiA2l
Everything was a bit different. Libido, migrations improved immmediately. Psoriasis has been a very long slow improvement over the three years. Arthritis improved 80% in a few months, but the remainder has been been getting better very slowly. Gout got worse for the first couple months and then went away completely for a couple years (and now is niggly again and I'm not quite sure why).

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/UYXFdxzNkK
I have RA from Lyme disease which is pretty auto immune.

...

My joints still get stiff but they don’t flare up like they used to.

...

To answer your question, it was hard to pinpoint the exact time I felt better since it really relates cutting everything that wasn’t ruminant animal. But noticeable improvements within the first few months.

For people who come to this way of eating who with intense autoimmune issues, it’s not a magic bullet, but it beats the alternative. My mood and energy are so good the mild symptoms of arthritis don’t phase me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/3OJwo8Y2vK
Helped overnight, I started by eating steak and eggs with bacon 3x a day. Ibs and psoriasis flareups begone

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/oIzN8QHt9e
Solved my IBD issues, go for a scope at the end of the year to confirm the inflammation is truly down. Took about 4 weeks to reach full symptomatic remission

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/EHPf9zVskr
This WOE helps my medication work optimally but I have not had any success with reducing my dosage. I’m significantly affected by my ADHD symptoms to the point where being on stimulant medication helps me to function at a bare minimum. When I started zero carb combined with my medication, I was able to thrive (or at least relative to where I had been before).

These positive effects only came around after a few months of beef, tallow, butter, eggs and liver.

Edit: as per usual the irony for us ADHD brains is that consistent, strict adherence to this routine and WOE is the key to success! The longer you stick it out, the easier the motivation comes to keep going IMO. The emotional ties to food were cut and I simply didn’t think of food and cravings at all which is what would historically throw me off track.


https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/yNIScO1mHF
I'd say it took a good 30 days to notice significant calmness and clarity. I was on 20mg 2x a day (addy/vyvanse), finals week up to 3, and also coffee for many years in college and a few years post when I entered the corporate world. I'm happy to say that carnivore has allowed me to go medicine free for close two years now. I honestly never thought I'd see the day where I could break the pharma shackles.


...

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/EThC756X0t
It took me about a year to be pain free. I'm currently over two years doing Carnivore, and I will notice some pain if I overdo it with milk, or spices. Not nearly as bad as before, but it can linger.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/s/3265w5Dqg1
For 2 months I felt no improvement at all. then it slowly started to fade away over a period of few months until it was complete gone (joint pain)

Note that I was also on the antibiotic protocol which I contribute part of my success as well


I've always been put off trying even just the keto diet, because I cannot imagine just eating nothing but meat, meat and more meat. I might be able to manage pure meat for a few days, to see if any health benefits manifested in that short timeframe. But I doubt if I could keep to meat only for weeks or months.
Yeah, I get that. A lot of people say they get used to it fairly quickly, though. There are ways to have at least some variety with carnivore - different meats and different ways of cooking.


One crazy idea I had though was to stop eating all sugars and carbohydrates, but spray my body skin from head to toe with a sugar solution, so that the sugar will be absorbed transdermally.

It's hard to imagine we can absorb anywhere near the necessary amount through our skin. Or I think we'd be seeing a lot more of that in cases where feeding tubes are needed.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
18,075
It's hard to imagine we can absorb anywhere near the necessary amount through our skin. Or I think we'd be seeing a lot more of that in cases where feeding tubes are needed.

Yes, it would be rather difficult. The only way you might stand a chance to get a reasonable amount of sugar across the skin is if you kept reapplying a sugar solution every hour.

1 gram of sugar contains 4 kcal of energy.

I imagine the skin might be able to absorb about 2 grams of sugar per hour. So if you did this 24 hours a day, you would absorb 24 x 2 x 4 = 192 kcal. That's about the energy found in one doughnut.
 

GreenEdge

Senior Member
Messages
667
Location
Brisbane, Australia
Isn't the carnivore diet just a slightly more extreme version of the ketogenic diet? The ketogenic diet allows some plant-based foods in moderation, such as salads, cruciferous vegetables, nuts, etc. Whereas the carnivore diet just consists of just meat and dairy, and completely eliminates plant-based foods.
The carnivore is a mostly animal based ketogenic diet. Some carnivores include green leafy or cretaceous vegetables. It's difficult to completely eliminate plant foods because sausages include fillers like rice four and bacon is typically cured in sugar (bacon is ~1% sugar); also many still drink coffee.

What advantages does the carnivore diet have over the known medical advantages of the ketogenic diet?
  1. Simplicity: The carnivore diet is extremely simple, as it involves eating only animal products, typically meat, fish, eggs, and some dairy. This simplicity makes it easier to follow compared to the ketogenic diet, which involves strict macro-nutrient ratios and monitoring of carbohydrate intake.

  2. Elimination of Plants: By excluding plant-based foods, the carnivore diet eliminates potential allergens such as gluten, soy, and various other compounds found in plants such as alkaloids, glycosides, phenolics, and terpenoids. For people with specific food sensitivities or autoimmune conditions, this can be advantageous.

  3. Improved Digestive Health: By eliminating potentially irritating plant foods. For individuals with digestive issues such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), reducing fiber intake by following a carnivore diet may offer relief from symptoms.

The ketogenic diet can help with medical conditions such as epilepsy and ADHD, for example. Can the carnivore diet help these conditions even more?
There is a strict version of carnivore called the lion diet which consists of only ruminant meat, salt and water. The lion diet is more powerful and appears necessary to cure autoimmune conditions.

It's not for everyone, just most of us (93% Americans are metabolically unhealthy)
Health authorities say we're in an epidemic of non-communicable diseases. What they won't admit is these are all metabolic diseases of insulin resistance caused by a high carbohydrate diet. To reverse insulin resistance one must reduce carbohydrate intake to near zero. Carbohydrate is a non-essential nutrient - our liver produces all the glucose we require from protein and fats (known as gluconeogenesis).
 

Artemisia

Senior Member
Messages
360
Carbohydrate is a non-essential nutrient
Respectfully --

Then why is it the highest macronutrient found in human breast milk?
In other words, carbohydrate is higher than protein and fat in breastmilk.

Why would women's bodies waste valuable resources producing a non-essential nutrient in higher amounts than fat and protein, to feed their young?

Why did low carb wreck my metabolism if this is optimal for everyone? I ate carnivore for 13 months, no sweet flavors no artificial sweeteners no cheating. Yes, I ate plenty of healthy fat and grassfed meat. I followed it strictly. It destroyed my health and I've never recovered from it.

Fasting blood sugar normal before this diet. During and after the diet, I was pre-diabetic. And that's the tip of the iceberg.

I'm not trying to argue with you. I would like someone on the low carb camp to address why it was such a disaster for me, and for others, without resorting to "you did it wrong."
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
18,075
Health authorities say we're in an epidemic of non-communicable diseases. What they won't admit is these are all metabolic diseases of insulin resistance caused by a high carbohydrate diet.

If you go back 100 years and further, unless you were wealthy, meat was a rare treat at mealtimes, because it was scarce and expensive. So people's diets of necessity involved lots of carbohydrate-based energy from fruits and vegetables.

Even the general assumption that before the agricultural revolution, hunter-gatherers ate mainly meat has now been questioned, with studies like this one suggesting that hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables.

I think chronic diseases most likely arise from infectious pathogens we acquire during life. In my case, I never put on any weight in my life. No matter how much I ate, I always maintained a lean athletic physique.

But after catching the Coxsackie B virus which triggered my ME/CFS, I developed central obesity. Friends who caught this virus from me also developed central obesity in some cases (even though they did not get ME/CFS).

There has also been suggestion that the global obesity epidemic might in part be due to adenovirus 36. When mice are experimentally infected with this virus, they become very obese. And this virus is found in obese people far more often than in normal weight people.
 

GreenEdge

Senior Member
Messages
667
Location
Brisbane, Australia
Even the general assumption that before the agricultural revolution, hunter-gatherers ate mainly meat has now been questioned, with studies like this one suggesting that hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables.
That evidence from the remains of 24 individuals from two burial sites in the Peruvian Andes dating to between 9,000 and 6,500 years ago, does not predate the development of agriculture about 12,000 years ago. Obviously agriculture became a thing in different populations at different times...
 
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sb4

Senior Member
Messages
1,684
Location
United Kingdom
Humans have been lean on both high meat diets and low meat diets throughout evolution. Even now you see people get and remain lean on both carnivore and vegan diets. Asians eat masses of carbs and are very lean. French eat loads of saturated fat and are also lean.

For me the issue is "breaking" ones metabolism. After you have broke your metabolism it's hard to fix it. There are work arounds like keto, carnivore, high carb etc that work for some people. The problem is they then tend to think you have to eat these foods to remain lean and thus humans must have ate these foods before if they were lean.

I don't think thats the case. If keto works for you it's probably because it is side stepping you're broken metabolism. If you start eating "normal" again and pile on weight then your metabolism is still broken.

Compare that to people who eat what they want and don't get fat until there metabolism is broken, like young hip. Some people go through the whole lives never breaking there metabolism, never calorie counting, and remain lean with bags of energy. Some break it at 30 etc, some like me break it at like 5 years old.
 

GreenEdge

Senior Member
Messages
667
Location
Brisbane, Australia
The Obesity Epidemic
What caused it? How can we stop it?

Note the following presentation by Zoe Harcombe is supported by proper science:
(see reference notes in video description on YouTube)


 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
18,075
The Obesity Epidemic
What caused it? How can we stop it?

A healthy body self regulates its inputs. We self regulate the amount of water we drink, the amount of air we breathe, and the amount of food we eat.

Food has become more abundant and available in the last 50 years, and some blame the obesity epidemic on that abundance. Certainly you cannot become obese without an ample supply of food.

However, water has become more available too, since the advent of taps and plumbing. Before that people had to walk to a well. But we don't see people with fluid-build up (oedema) in their body, just because water has become freely available; you only suffer from oedema when you have an illness or bodily dysfunction.

I think the same applies to obesity: even if food has become more abundant, a health body self-regulates appetite and the amount of fat stored in its fat cells (adipocytes). This self-regulation is performed by a system of hormones and other messenger chemicals.

The fastest way for a body to become dysfunctional is catching an infectious pathogen. That pathogen can infect and damage hormone glands, and can trigger autoimmune attack on hormone receptors. As we have moved from rural to crowded urban environments, we have all become more exposed to pathogens, because pathogens spread more easily from person to person in crowded environments.

I am sure you must of heard of that famous story of a mother getting a faecal transplant (for medical reasons) from her obese daughter. The mother was always lean all her life, but as soon as she got that transplant (and thus acquired some pathogens from her daughter), she started putting on masses of weight, and became obese too, even though she did not change her diet or exercise habits.
 

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
3,058
I am sure you must of heard of that famous story of a mother getting a faecal transplant (for medical reasons) from her obese daughter. The mother was always lean all her life, but as soon as she got that transplant (and thus acquired some pathogens from her daughter), she started putting on masses of weight, and became obese too, even though she did not change her diet or exercise habits.
I had not heard this story, but i know of an analogous one where someone got a fecal transplant from an unrelated obese donor and then started putting on weight.
 

Artemisia

Senior Member
Messages
360
Friends who caught this virus from me also developed central obesity in some cases (even though they did not get ME/CFS).
Why do you think not everyone gets ME/CFS from a pathogen they're exposed to? The usual theories people suggest of genetics, mold, other toxic exposures, and/or childhood trauma?
 

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
3,058
Why do you think not everyone gets ME/CFS from a pathogen they're exposed to? The usual theories people suggest of genetics, mold, other toxic exposures, and/or childhood trauma?
I'm not Hip but i would assume ME/CFS is some type of immune dysregulation therefore the pathogen is the trigger but like a game of dominos you can have many triggers. The point being it tipped the scales.
 

GreenEdge

Senior Member
Messages
667
Location
Brisbane, Australia
@Hip Are you saying people become obese because food is plentiful and readily available, so they over eat?

Certainly you cannot become obese without an ample supply of food.
Not true, people can become obese on a calorie restricted diet. Our bodies will adjust metabolic rate according to calories available and will even shut down reproductive organs and reduce brain capacity to save energy.

Hormones play a big role, you've got the type 1 diabetics proving calories don't matter because the hormone (insulin) is not there they're not gaining any muscle mass, they're loosing weight on 10,000 calories.

Hormones influence fat accumulation and where it is deposited. That's why males and females fatten differently. Men who eat soy get man boobs because soy isoflavones act similarly to the female hormone estrogen. Insulin is the master hormone that drives weight gain but it's primary purpose is to lower blood glucose; the excess energy has to go somewhere. Cortisol encourages central adiposity.
See YouTube: TOP 5 SECRETS For Optimal Hormones! | Anthony Phaesse

No other animal on the planet becomes obese (no matter how much food is available). Hibernating animals do, but it's to prepare for winter. When they become fat enough (or food is no longer available) they enter hibernation and when they emerge in spring they are thin again and they stay thin until they eat fruit at the end of summer and that's what triggers the weight gain for the following winter.
See YouTube: Fructose triggers hunger, insulin resistance, and fat storage | Dr Richard Johnson

To fatten livestock we feed them grain. Grain fed animals put on more muscle but also much more fat mass compared to grass fed livestock. Salmon feed now contains grain (to fatten) even thou they are a carnivorous fish.

If your not over 50 then the cause of obesity is likely not so obvious, because you did not witness when the US Dietary Guidelines were first introduced in 1980.

US Dietary Guidelines encouraged everyone to:

Before the discovery of insulin and the development of modern diabetes treatments, dietary management was one of the few methods available to control blood sugar levels in diabetic individuals.

The first documented use of a low-carbohydrate diet for diabetes management dates back to the late 18th century when John Rollo, a British army surgeon, prescribed a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet to diabetic patients. Rollo's approach focused on reducing the intake of starchy and sugary foods, including grains, to help control blood sugar levels. His work laid the foundation for later dietary interventions for diabetes.

'Civilised' man is the only chronically sick animal on the planet. (Barry Groves)
Man is the only species clever enough to make his own food...
and uneducated enough to eat it.​
 
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