Primal diet - Pros and Cons? page 13

[Paleobird]

Michelle, quinoa is healthy and if it makes you feel better then you should eat it.

Also, anybody who ever told you quinoa wasn't Primal didn't know what they were talking about. It's a seed.

I don't eat it because I don't need the extra carbs but for a thin and very active person, this is a perfectly Primal option.

[Paleobird]

Primal is inheritantly high fat, low carb.

PHD isn't 'low fat', but since there is a focus on eating a higher level of carbs, that means that either protein or fat MUST be lowered. Since my protein levels were where I wanted them, that meant reducing fat. If you want to keep overall calories the same, you can't raise one macro without reducing another.

You can keep saying this all you want but it's simply not true. Primal covers everything from my ketosis to Choco and his sweet potatoes. I'm the Inuit and he's the Kitivans but we are all Primal. Primal is not about macro breakdowns, It's about real whole natural foods.
The PHD is a very balanced approach. You do realize that Mark wrote the forward for the book right?

[zoebird]

It's true about Quinoa. We feed the kid a lot of quinoa. We can get 5 different varieties here. He loves it. It's definitely a decent little seed.

[VacillateWildly]

My hair is curlier, too. The curl of hair is supposedly determined by the shape of the follicle. One might hypothesize, then, that thinner, lower-fat skin on the scalp would lead to elongated follicles, producing flatter and thus more curly hair.

I've always had very curly hair, but now it is BIG. It's shinier too. Curly hair has a bean shaped rather than an oval hair follicle, it's mindblowing to think that diet can change even the shape of my hair follicles. Does this mean we have fat follicles?!

[sbhikes]

Here's what Mark says about fat:

Think about this: if protein and carbs stay fairly constant (and carbs stay under 150), you can use fat as the major energy variable in your diet. Feeling like you need more fuel (and you’ve already covered your bases with protein and carbs)? Reach for something with fat. Nuts, avocados, coconut, eggs, butter, olive oil, fish, chicken, lamb, beef, the list is a long one. 100 grams of fats per day would only add 900 calories to our girl’s daily average, putting her at between 1620 and 1940 calories a day. Even if she averages somewhere between 1400 and 2200 calories per day over a few weeks, as long as she pays attention to protein and carbs, her body composition will shift to lower body fat and more desirable lean mass. If she decides to do some walking, a few brief intense weight sessions and a sprint day here and there, that process would accelerate greatly. If she gets to a point where she’s content with her body fat, she can even add in a little more fat to provide energy that she previously got from her stored fat.

The main thing I’ve figured out from eating this way for years is that I don’t need nearly as many calories to maintain health, mass, and body fat as I once thought I did – or as the Conventional Wisdom says I do. I eat 600-1000 calories per day less than when I ate a carbohydrate-based diet, yet I maintain slightly lower body fat and slightly higher muscle mass on even less training. Remember: 80% of body composition is determined by diet. The best part is that I don’t ever feel hungry because I base my eating on exactly what my 10,000-year-old genes want me to eat.

Read more: How to Eat According to the Primal Blueprint | Mark's Daily Apple

The bolding is mine.

Eating "a lot" of fat (I don't even know if 100g is a lot) goes hand-in-hand with eating fewer calories and fewer carbohydrates.

Here is what he says on the same page about carbs:

Don’t forget that your body can make up to 200 grams of glycogen from fats and protein every day, too. On the other hand, if you are looking to lose body fat, keeping carbs to under 80 grams per day will help immensely in lowering insulin and taking fat out of storage. On the other other hand, if you are insistent on training hard for long periods of time, you would add more carbs (say, 100 per day extra for every extra hour you train hard). It becomes a matter of doing the math and experimenting with the results.

Read more: How to Eat According to the Primal Blueprint | Mark's Daily Apple

No low carb dogma. No insistence on high fat. No "stuff yourself with fat" or "eat as much as you want."

He clearly says to start from a lower than SAD carb place and add fat for energy, but he also says eat more carbohydrate if you are physically active (100g for every hour of training would be a huge increase for me on some days). Do the math and experiment. In other words, find what works for you but be aware of calories.

Maybe some of the critical ones around here should actually read Mark's blog now and then and make sure you understand what you are criticizing.

[YogaBare]

One of the problems I had when I started Primal and shifted my diet from high carb to high(er) fat was that I didn't experience the satiation people kept speaking about, and is referenced in that excerpt. I also started having digestive problems, and my insomnia got worse. The advice I got was "eat more fat". Which I did

When you increase the fat you've got to lose something else. By default, I had to take my carbs down (because protein is fine). My problems got worse.

And that's how I quickly ended up eating a diet extremely low in carbs, very high in fat.

It's been a while since I read Mark's book, so I can't remember he specifically says "eat more fat" in response to the problems that occur on Primal (and we can see from this thread that there are a few that keep cropping up) but, like many people on this forum, I read a lot of other Paleo writers, and the message is generally "eat more fat". Taubes, Briffa, Noakes etc. - in some way or another they promote fat and say we should eat fewer carbs.

How extreme an individual is in the application of this message is obviously down to personal responsibility. This isn't about playing the blame game. But we need to talk about things to keep them evolving. As Paleobird said, she challenged the idea that calories didn't count. Eating real food is amazing, but the shortcoming for me with Paleo is that fat is still the holy grail.

The movement needs to take account of people's individual experiences or else it just becomes as bad as CW.

[oxide]

We are forgetting what a tiny minority we still are.

Mark's post is written from the perspective of talking to a SAD. To a primal, those macros are regular eating. But to a SAD, 80 grams of carb IS low carb dogma, and 100 g of fat IS insisting on high-fat.

Mark does say to do the math on calories. But IMO on a forum populated with young active men, that got kinda lost. Thankfully, we're figuring it out. The eat-all-you-want meme only works if you assume that eating fat makes you full enough fast enough that you don't want to eat more. I stress fast enough because we can eat faster than our stomach can send out a stop signal. The classic example is bulletproof coffee. 300 cals of liquid fat could be in your stomach before the stomach knows it.


[rant]
Paleobird, I'm still wary of using the phrase "whole natural foods," especially when talking to SADs. SADs still think that whole wheat is real and whole and natural. One could argue that wheat bread is less processed than ground beef. When someone asks me about Primal/paleo, the first thing I say is NO GRAINS.

I'm also pretty wary of stuff like the Irish all-potato diet. I guess that's primal... but...
[/rant]

[zoebird]

Here's what Mark says about fat:

Eating "a lot" of fat (I don't even know if 100g is a lot) goes hand-in-hand with eating fewer calories and fewer carbohydrates.

No low carb dogma. No insistence on high fat. No "stuff yourself with fat" or "eat as much as you want."

He clearly says to start from a lower than SAD carb place and add fat for energy, but he also says eat more carbohydrate if you are physically active (100g for every hour of training would be a huge increase for me on some days). Do the math and experiment. In other words, find what works for you but be aware of calories.

Maybe some of the critical ones around here should actually read Mark's blog now and then and make sure you understand what you are criticizing.

True.

I have also discovered that as a vegan, I was eating 1800-2200 calories per day, whereas now I"m eating 1500-1700. That's a 300-700 calorie difference! That's a BIG difference.

my husband is eating less, too. He used to need about 3000-3500 calories per day to build muscle. now, he's more like 2300-2600!

And, that saves us money. It currently saves us $200-220/wk!

[zoebird]

I think "the movement" does take into account a lot of variances or variables, or our various versions of it wouldn't all be in the same family. Primal includes dairy, traditional paleo elements do not. Some include "the whole animal" foods, others say eat the lean stuff. Some says go all raw, others are vegetarian (and/or pescitarian), and still others will have a lot of carbs while others have less.

Honestly, It's a wide open-system. Anyone who thinks it's not a wide-open idea isn't paying attention (imo).

[Paleobird]

The advice I got was "eat more fat". Which I did
When you increase the fat you've got to lose something else. By default, I had to take my carbs down (because protein is fine). My problems got worse.
And that's how I quickly ended up eating a diet extremely low in carbs, very high in fat.

The whole point of the Eat Moar Fat thread was to show how simplistic that message was. I heard the same message at first and it didn't work for me either. It wasn't until I understood that it was eat a higher percentage as fat while keeping protein moderate and total calories in check that it finally gelled for me.

Honestly, It's a wide open-system. Anyone who thinks it's not a wide-open idea isn't paying attention (imo).

QFT.