I read a very interesting piece in Time magazine regarding the return to meat-eating by former vegetarians. CBS News performed a study claiming that ex-vegetarians outnumber current ones by a 3 to 1 margin. I found that quite surprising. Not that I’ve ever looked into it all that much, but I was still suprised to see such a high number. I’m not surprised in the sense that I believe vegetarianism is harmful to the majority of us, and the statistic only bears out the truth.
25.7.11
The Masai: Introduction | Mother Nature Obeyed
The Masai: Introduction
Those of us in the assortment of fat-and-cholesterol-aren’t-going-to-kill-you communities often invoke the Masai in our arguments, but quite frequently I believe the attention we devote to them is superficial. In this series, I’d like to take a more in-depth view of their diet and risk of disease.
In this series I will thus first cover Masai culture and history, then explore their diet — including the hundreds of plants they have traditionally used — and then culminate by refereeing the “Taylor vs. Mann Showdown.” These last posts will address the historic arguments between George Mann and Bruce Taylor about whether the Masai did indeed have atherosclerosis, and whether they had low cholesterol because of genetics or because of diet and lifestyle.
Links to posts in this series will appear here as they are added.
23.7.11
Your Lifespan – Part 2 – How you and I get ill | The Missing Human Manual
Your Lifespan – Part 2 – How you and I get ill | The Missing Human Manual
Extract:
For right up until my late 40′s I was relatively thin and still able to do a lot of things.
Then one day in my 50″s, it seemed as if a switch has been turned on. Each year, I put on a few pounds and became progressively weaker. Then about 58, this process started to accelerate. My knees also were hurting a lot and I was investigating knee replacement! But I thought that all of this was normal.
I thought aged 59, that putting on weight and feeling poorly was my destiny. After all we all get fat and ill as we age – don’t we?
Extract:
For right up until my late 40′s I was relatively thin and still able to do a lot of things.
Then one day in my 50″s, it seemed as if a switch has been turned on. Each year, I put on a few pounds and became progressively weaker. Then about 58, this process started to accelerate. My knees also were hurting a lot and I was investigating knee replacement! But I thought that all of this was normal.
I thought aged 59, that putting on weight and feeling poorly was my destiny. After all we all get fat and ill as we age – don’t we?
Benefits of high-fat diets/fat burning adaption - for athletes
.......So where does all of this leave us? We are seeing more attention being given to the potential benefits of a high fat diet, and are seeing more of the mechanisms come through. Increasingly, it looks like a high-fat diet alone can drive many of the adaptations we seek via our training, with training further enhancing these.
Eating a high-fat base diet, undertaking training sessions in a fasted state, whilst ensuring an adequate [paleo] carbohydrate intake during the recovery period, may offer all of the necessary dietary periodisation elements to maximise endurance performance without having to follow the conventional wisdom of stuffing one's face with carbs at every opportunity. Additionally, it looks as though we can achieve a degree of fat-adaptation within our high-powered type-2 fibres, offering them a degree of fatigue resistance via a lower drain on their glycogen stores (which can be better utilised in race situations where it counts).
In part two (which I will try to keep shorter), I will look at one of my favourite topics, and possibly utter the words 'I told you so' - the effects of strength training on endurance capacity in top-level endurance athletes.
nb:
Eating a high-fat base diet, undertaking training sessions in a fasted state, whilst ensuring an adequate [paleo] carbohydrate intake during the recovery period, may offer all of the necessary dietary periodisation elements to maximise endurance performance without having to follow the conventional wisdom of stuffing one's face with carbs at every opportunity. Additionally, it looks as though we can achieve a degree of fat-adaptation within our high-powered type-2 fibres, offering them a degree of fatigue resistance via a lower drain on their glycogen stores (which can be better utilised in race situations where it counts).
In part two (which I will try to keep shorter), I will look at one of my favourite topics, and possibly utter the words 'I told you so' - the effects of strength training on endurance capacity in top-level endurance athletes.
nb:
Fat adaptation in well-trained athletes: effects o... [Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2011] - PubMed result
High-fat diet overrules the effects of training on... [J Appl Physiol. 2011] - PubMed result
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