You’ve been quite busy on my blog this morning! Now let me see if I can cover all of your questions, concerns, and inquiries in one go:
1. Agree that grains are generally rubbish and should be avoided. However, it is very hard to ignore the cultures that do consume a greater amount of grains that don’t have high rates of heart disease/obesity/type II diabetes (Japan, for instance). Those who had grains first seem best adapted to them; maybe in another couple centuries the rest of us will be as well. It might be like the Italians and Asians who are becoming more and more lactose tolerant…adapting at an extremely fast rate. You are correct though, grains are generally bad (I move clients to sprouted versions if they’re not ready to “give them up” quite yet) and people should reduce carb intake…you’re not emptying glycogen stores blogging or working a spreadsheet.

2. Since I do view all of this from the perspective of performance and health, I view hormones under a different light. Your agreeing that insulin is a huge player, but not the only player is commendable, as so many individuals in the paleo community fear it so much that they’ll eschew fruit consumption for fear of an insulin spike. But I’ve shown in other posts that an insulin spike post-workout has been shown to increase GH output, never mind that GH isn’t the panacea it has been made out to be. Back to the point, there are individuals, or maybe their blog posts just indicate as such, that feel that no carbs/low insulin is going to solve their waistline woes; ASP stores fat more efficiently than any other hormone in a zero-insulin environment. This is important and shouldn’t be cast aside.

3.My motivation is two-fold: what I do for me and what I recommend for clients. The latter will always be a distillation of the former that caters to their needs and goals. I seem to come from a unique perspective amount paleo individuals in that I was painfully skinny and do need a substantial amount of calories to gain muscular weight (which I’ll also accept a bit of fat gain with). This means more carbs centered around workouts. When I want to cut that fat, I go pure paleo for the reasons I mentioned: adequate protein, hunger blunting, “feels” like I’m eating tons of food(I say feels because I track the calories, an old OCD habit, and it is lower than it feels like I have eaten). Since most of my clients are coming to me for fat loss, moving them closer to paleo is ideal for all the reasons I’ve mentioned; lately I’ve just sent them Methuselah’s paleo diet video and taken any questions after that. I don’t think it is magic because grok ate it and I tell my clients such, but I like it because it gets people eating more real, sating food thus minimizing chemicals, preservatives, and giving them freedom to be social when eating out.

So what you see on my blog is about what I’m experiencing, experimenting, and researching into. I don’t wish to be unlabeled per se; I just wish a critical eye is cast on the details and some of the mythology is removed. I’ve tried to show this in various other blog posts regarding GH and food mixing. Eating whole, real food is fantastic and a fast track to total health, especially compared to the SAD. Where I come from seems to be different than most paleo followers and that contributes to my writing.

I can also appreciate the damage we have done to ourselves from the advent of agriculture through to the explosion of refined grain and sugar products within the past century. Of course hunter-gatherers had to make the most of what nature offered in their particular location, but they do have one thing in common – they didn’t eat grains (or refined sugar). Were grains readily available and all edible raw, those 364 days could have helped us evolve to digest them properly. But they weren’t, so we can’t.

I know the science behind fat-storage, but you fail to reflect on the damage and fat-storage that IS driven by perpetually high insulin levels. They’re not saying that insulin is the only player in the fat-gain game – if anything, the argument often ignores insulin’s role in fat-storage. What some look at instead is insulin’s role in triggering the hunger response, which drives further consumption. As you say, the consistency of energy intake is vital, so if people are following their hunger sensation (or even sugar-cravings in the cases of addicts) they’re going to be taking in more calories than they need. That’s not just an issue for those trying to lose weight, but for everyone.

I’m confused by your motivation – for someone who claims to follow a mostly-paleo diet, and who encourages others to do so for weight-loss, you seem to have posted a lot about how wrong the Paleo lifestyle is (or at least, your skewed weight-focused perception of the lifestyle and its ‘followers’). Why are you so vehement in your wish to remain un-labelled, and from where do you draw your stereotyping of paleo dieters? If you’re so special and smart and able to avoid the supposed inaccuracies of beliefs that you think others draw from the same information you have access to, then why do you assume that everyone else can’t recognise the proposed flaws?

I’m actually a little disappointed that you wrote this, since I was planning on writing something similar.

I do eat predominantly paleo and (through a lot of trial and error) have found out that I feel better when I don’t eat grains. I think there IS some science emerging suggesting that grains and legumes do have some serious unhealthy effects in most people – but I’m not well versed enough in this to argue it. My omission of them is based purely on my own experiences.

The fanaticism in some of the community gets to me though – people love simple solutions to complex problems.

Well said.

Anyway, no hunger whatsoever. I just snacked when we stopped because I knew I needed it.

I even begin to think of how easy it would be to keep a 1000kcal/day deficit whilst eating lean protein and filling in the rest with nuts/seeds. I will probably try it sometime.

Thanks for checking me out. I agree that there are many approaches; I first got lean on a zone-like 30/40/30 split by, what else, reducing calories. It did feel like dieting at times vs. when I eat paleo I trend toward lower calories without thinking about it. I’ve gotten my mother lean by cycling carbs, friends lean through PSMF’s + high carb refeeds while improving their blood markers. If anything, we all should “consider” the “one” method, try it, find out what works and doesn’t work for you, and have a chat about it. That seems a bit too rational for the zealots in the industry, though!

Al,

Glad you stumbled on me! I try to post infrequently to keep content quality high. Thanks for the comment!

Al from the HITP list here. I didn’t know you had a blog. I’ve been flipping through some past entry’s and it’s good.

Al

thanks for the post…i just discovered your blog and will look on more frequently.