Here's a question for you--if cutting out fruit for a time is supposed to be the cause of my problems with fruit, why didn't the same occur with the plant foods that I don't have much issue with?
you are funny, i am as clueless as you are and everyone else in here.
Well, I'm glad you found humor in it, but I wasn't really trying to be funny. Didn't you expect questions would be generated by your apparent suggestion that my 279 mg/dl postprandial BG 2 hours after eating a lot of strawberries is more or less normal? I haven't seen many claims like yours before (on the contrary, I've even seen some fruitarians claim that loads of fruit doesn't spike their blood sugar or cause any of the symptoms I experience, or that such symptoms are just "detox"), so it seems to invite questions. Perhaps you're right about it, but I had little way to judge your claim, so I inquired. I also did some further searching of my own and found several sources that suggest that my numbers were not "normal" or healthy, though those sources unfortunately didn't provide quantities of food or sugars to compare to. I like to ask lots of questions. and maintain an attitude of basically questioning everything, because it's one of the ways I've learned a lot, though not everyone likes answering a lot of questions, of course, so I hope you don't mind mine.
My guess is that fruits affect me somewhat more negatively than greens and some other veggies I've listed and that fruits affect me more negatively than they do most other people (with some thriving on them, as Tyler likes to point out), but they're only guesses based largely on my experience and the reports others have made of their experiences. My problems with fruit don't appear to have started only after I cut them out. Apparently that has been the case for other people, but not for me.
I enjoy fruits quite a bit, but can live without them if need be (at least I managed to for some months and hope I would be able to manage it longer if necessary). I've been fascinated, from the standpoint of curious observer, by the amount of emotion that discussions of fruit seem to generate--along with dairy and fatty meats like pemmican (as Tyler has pointed out). Veggies that are low in starch and lean meats don't seem to generate as much emotion in discussions. Is it just coincidence that fruits, dairy and fatty meats also tend to be more tasty foods than veg and lean meats? In the cases where I've seen people say "I refuse to give up _____," I can't think of a single example where the food wasn't high in either carbs or fat. Fiber and protein don't seem to do it for people the way that carbs and fats do.
unlike many many reports of sudden progress and then falling behind, i see very very slow but steady progress. why is it different from others - who knows?
Right, and that's one of the basic things I'm trying to figure out--why some things don't work for me that do for others, why others work for me that don't for others, what might help me get beyond stubborn plateaus with certain health issues I still have, etc. I find that asking questions, exploring and experimenting helps me work out what really does work best for me. In this way I've managed to work out decent answers to some puzzles that seemed insolvable at first blush.
For example, I used to think that I didn't need to cut back on fruits or nuts or eat mostly raw, but I asked questions, did some searching, experimented and found I did indeed do better when I made these further changes. The vast majority of Paleo dieters outside this forum seem to think like I used to think--that they wouldn't benefit greatly from further changes like going mostly- or all- raw. Some even go so far as to ridicule what we do. But my guess is that most of them haven't actually tried it, and until they do, it seems to me that they can't know for sure (which is one reason I tried it). Maybe their assumptions are right, maybe not. As you say, who knows? And as my mother used to say, "Don't knock it till you've tried it."
I see asking questions, experimenting and observing as being part of the scientific mindset ... and the hunter-gatherer mindset, for that matter (though there are of course also differences between modern science and HG culture and wisdom). Even if my health were fully optimized I would probably still be somewhat curious about these sorts of matters, because I've always been curious and enjoyed learning (perhaps because both my parents were educators for most of their careers). I hope I don't wear out people's patience with my questions--they aren't meant to do that. For me, questions and discussions of scientific matters are generally energy-boosters rather than depleters and I enjoy it the way Lex enjoys repairing clocks.
when i started Weston Price I was producing goat-like poop, very small and very hard. since transitioning to raw meat, my stool has normalized. i'm doing very basic things, more diverse than Lex, but not that much. i do not seek nor i believe in some kind of magic beetle juice or any killer food combinations.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I agree with you about not seeking any kind of magic, nor do I seek final answers from science papaers. I don't believe in magical cure-alls and try to apply skeptical questioning to extraordinary claims while still also keeping a generally open mind. To me science is not about answers and absolutism. It's about questions. The questions are the thing. It's the path that's important, more than the final destination. To me even religion, spirituality and philosophy seem at their healthiest when they are more about questions and the path (ex: Taoism, shamanism, animism, Eckhart Tolle, Socrates, ...) than answers and the destination (ex: Wahhabism, Osama bin Laden, the Jim Jones cult, the Heaven's Gate cult, ...).
As Daniel Quinn says, "there is no one right way to live" and to that I would add the corollary, "there is no one right way to find out how you should live." Your taking a break from science papers would probably be lauded by Tolle--he says that the spaces between words are important too, not just the words, and we could say that the spaces between the papers are also important (and there is certainly no necessity for scientific papers or even paper itself, for it is an invention that humans got along without for millions of years--thinking in terms of thousands or millions of years helps to put things in perspective). Even I need a break from science and learning at times and enjoy jaunts through the woods by my new home, which remind me of my childhood enjoyment of playing in the woods with friends and siblings.
like you i was reading a lot of science papers but came to conclusion that most are either inconclusive or just theories. so i tossed the whole science away for now. if i run into interesting science paper i would read it but would not pay much attention to it.
That's fine, I don't expect others to do what I do, and it would probably actually frighten me if a lot of people did. It doesn't bother me that scientific inquiries have been inconclusive or "just theories." Which should be unsurprising to anyone who knows my perspective. Plus, I utilize not just scientific papers, but also my experience, the reports of others of their experiences, the study of nature, experimentation and observation. I guess you could call it a sort of Jeet-Kune-Do approach to finding what works for me re: health and lifestyle. Human beings are fallible creatures incapable of perfection, so anything we produce, whether it be science or what have you, will be imperfect.
John Ioannidis revealed that many studies are bogus and influenced by money from interests like drug companies in "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False." Yet, ironically, it was in a scientific research paper that he revealed this (
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/). So there's a quandary for you--scientific research is quite screwed up, but we don't have much else in the way of tools for testing claims in a way that satisfies multiple parties. I have my personal experience, but it may not do you a lot of good, so scientists attempt to put larger numbers of experiences together in studies to provide results that might be more relevant to more people, but unfortunately they need money to do it and those with the money don't tend to want to pay for things that produce results they don't like. It seems somewhat of a catch 22, but the Internet does seem to be helping people like you and me get around such problems by sharing our experiences and thoughts directly with each other in larger numbers than we could before its advent.
i have gained around 7lb so far, i hope to increase it to 10 and then i'll post detailed report along with before and after pictures and maybe a workout video.
Cool, thanks.
