What are your experiences with short term vs. long term results

[Dorothy]

I've been thinking a lot about how something can make you feel good for a short time, but can be deleterious over the long-haul and how to figure out the difference.

Coffee for instance can smell and taste wonderful and can make me feel like a superbeing - for a short time - but long-term it becomes obvious that the damage it creates outweighs the short term enjoyment and good feelings.

Also, so many of the diets and foods that we are experimenting with are new for many of us and how do you figure out what is best long-term instead of temporary benefit? What is even the definition of long term and short term?

Your thoughts?

[TylerDurden]

Well, when I was first experimenting with a 100 different diets, , I would find  delightful, short-term beneficial effects such as with the raw vegan diet(which cuased me to become slimmer and to avoid getting those nasty stomach-pains I got from eating any cooked animal foods). With raw dairy, I would feel euphoric, like on drugs, for the first half an hour followed by a period of drowsiness - unsurprising since opioids in raw dairy influence the brain like drugs do.

At the time, I would try out a diet for anywhere up to 2 years. If it failed to cure more than 10 percent of my health-problems, I was forced to try something else. Eventually, I tried the raw, palaeolithic diet which sorted something like 50 percent of my health-problems within 4 months, so I stuck with it, and my remaining other health-problems slowly improved over time, too.

[cherimoya_kid]

The difficulty in giving up my veganism was that the raw vegan thing had been healing SO many of my problems.  If I had never gone low-fat fruitarian, I might still be vegan, because it was working fairly well for me .  However, after reading Dr. Price's book, specifically how the Bantu, who ate mostly plants (lots of fruit and cooked sweet tubers), had 13 times the cavities of the Masai, who ate mostly meat, milk, and blood, I realized that something was seriously wrong with the vegan diet.  I myself had terrible teeth problems from the fruit, and reading about the better teeth of the Masai clinched it for me.

I've had no need to look back.  The only problems with this diet are cost and social isolation. Sourcing cheaper foods is simply a matter of persistence, and the social isolation can be overcome with persistence as well, and the very occasional partly-cooked meal.

The longer I do it, the healthier I get.  I give up foods that aren't working for me, and I try new foods too, if I think they might work well, and/or if people here suggest them, or if I read that traditional peoples eat them. 

It's a process.  You never stop learning, I think. It's a great big long experiment, at least for me.

[billy4184]

I went with raw salads/fruit and cooked meat a while ago during martial arts training. It definitely wasn't the best diet for that kind of sport, in that I often felt fatigued in quick,fast bouts but I still see the period (about 6 months) as being one of the best times in my life. I had been failing university, getting depressed and getting drunk way too much, and the feeling of having the self-discipline to get up every morning at 6, have a run, then later on train for a couple of hours etc while eating only what I wanted to eat, and pushing through fatigue in training (despite the fact that I wasn't eating anywhere near enough) was for me something I value so much that I had always thought about it when I went back to eating cooked foods and dropped training.
I don't know if its good for me long-term, because I have only tried it for a short time, but now that I'm doing the (mostly) raw diet thing again, and running again, I have that feeling back. I could go into blood-sugar, insulin, all that stuff but I just feel like I'm back where I belong.
Cheers

[Dorothy]

Well, when I was first experimenting with a 100 different diets, , I would find  delightful, short-term beneficial effects such as with the raw vegan diet(which cuased me to become slimmer and to avoid getting those nasty stomach-pains I got from eating any cooked animal foods). With raw dairy, I would feel euphoric, like on drugs, for the first half an hour followed by a period of drowsiness - unsurprising since opioids in raw dairy influence the brain like drugs do.

At the time, I would try out a diet for anywhere up to 2 years. If it failed to cure more than 10 percent of my health-problems, I was forced to try something else. Eventually, I tried the raw, palaeolithic diet which sorted something like 50 percent of my health-problems within 4 months, so I stuck with it, and my remaining other health-problems slowly improved over time, too.

Up to 2 years! That's quite a long time. I like your parameters you set for yourself of 10% of your health concerns. Intelligent approach.

[Dorothy]

The difficulty in giving up my veganism was that the raw vegan thing had been healing SO many of my problems.  If I had never gone low-fat fruitarian, I might still be vegan, because it was working fairly well for me .  However, after reading Dr. Price's book, specifically how the Bantu, who ate mostly plants (lots of fruit and cooked sweet tubers), had 13 times the cavities of the Masai, who ate mostly meat, milk, and blood, I realized that something was seriously wrong with the vegan diet.  I myself had terrible teeth problems from the fruit, and reading about the better teeth of the Masai clinched it for me.

I've had no need to look back.  The only problems with this diet are cost and social isolation. Sourcing cheaper foods is simply a matter of persistence, and the social isolation can be overcome with persistence as well, and the very occasional partly-cooked meal.

The longer I do it, the healthier I get.  I give up foods that aren't working for me, and I try new foods too, if I think they might work well, and/or if people here suggest them, or if I read that traditional peoples eat them. 

It's a process.  You never stop learning, I think. It's a great big long experiment, at least for me.

I bet it was the fruits and tubers that contributed the most to the tooth problems. When I was on a raw vegan diet with little fruit and no tubers my teeth healed up and filled themselves in nicely. But thank goodness you heard about the Masai! I had a Masai warrior friend once. Terribly sweet soul.

I'm pretty used to social isolation when it comes to food. But the forum is a great balm for that isolation isn't it?

[Dorothy]

Hey Billy - martial arts huh? What form? Just goes to show the importance of adapting diet to lifestyle and exercise.

[Dorothy]

Ok - so where my thoughts have been going..... 30 years experimenting with raw foods in general and 20 years of vegan and the vegetarian with many different amounts of raw - lots of it almost entirely raw but not quite - I would go to 100% raw and feel truly amazing. But then anywhere between 3 and 6 months there would be a change where I would feel (for the lack of a better word) too sattvic. There has always been that all raw feeling that I long for and yet - something not right long-term. Even just 95% raw was just not the same as 100%. The last couple of years I've included RAF - but haven't been able to go to 100% raw for any appreciable amount of time because of circumstances.

I know people say here that if someone lives even a decade or two feeling great that it could still mean that the diet is not sufficient, complete or good. My perspective on what is health changed radically having those 100% raw times. I didn't get sick or feel bad as a vegetarian or vegan with some cooked foods all those years - but I learned that not being sick was not real health.

So, now, finally, I am coming upon a time when I can try my 100% raw with some raw animal foods included to see if the 100% raw feelings can be kept going and built upon.

But my mind keeps on going back to so many years feeling better than most people around me, having no sicknesses or illness to cure or judge by and i wonder how I will judge what happens.

It's almost scary. I'm dealing with the prospect of having such a long-term dream of being able to live on all raw foods with that kind of energy and health without the yo-yo back and forth - and I wonder if I will be able to evaluate it objectively. It's been a goal to live that way for so many decades now.

Each step of the way there has been so much hope and such big gaps in real understanding or broad knowledge. It's a bit disarming to think that I could be so lacking in such basic information as I was for decades at a time. Now I am doing something that is not only little understood but taboo ON TOP of the raw I've already done.

It makes me wonder 10 years from now what I will be learning about my strange experiments on myself.

[billy4184]

Hi Dorothy, I was doing Muay Thai, amateur.

My biggest obstacle with the raw food diet is getting enough carbohydrates. Maybe we were supposed to be able to run off fat, but for me there are three problems. First, I don't have energy for quick, fast exercise. Second, I have never felt great in ketosis, maybe it gets better, but I doubt it. I feel calm and satisfied but some kind of `awareness' seems to be missing. Third, it seems to me from my own studies that plants and nuts formed a large part of our diet for many millions of years. For me it is incredibly obvious that we are not supposed to just eat meat, or we would be sentient beasts with claws and fangs and a gut to match.

I liked very much how you said that even if there are no health problems, doesn't mean it is the best diet. I never had any big problems on any diet, except for my teeth. I have had mood problems and drowsiness problems, but little that I could definitively class as a health problem. I have often wondered if the Eskimos or the Bushmen really feel THAT great. I mean, trudging for miles through the kalahari desert, or through endless ice and snow, I'm not sure I would be able to tell whether my aches, pains and mood were a result of diet or not. Humans' biggest asset is our adaptability, but that doesn't mean something is good for us.

Well, I feel best when I eat a LOT of vegetables and small portions of meat and fat with every meal. I don't feel great when I eat a lot of meat, but if I go without, very soon I am craving some. I don't feel good when I eat a lot of fruit. The problem is, how do I get enough carbs to feel good all day? I'm trying to slowly increase my ability to handle fiber, so that I can eat more and more green planty material. If I don't manage to find a balance, I will probably add a little sweet potato or beans here and there (cooked).
Thanks for a great thread.
Cheers

[Dorothy]

Billy, we seem to have some things in common.

You don't do well on fiber then? So salads aren't your thing huh? Many people here say that the protective devices of the plants make toxins that make the plants hard to digest for them. I like salads and vegetables, digest them well and they make me feel good, so I guess I'm pretty lucky there. I also have so many years eating raw vegan that I have hundreds of tricks of the trade in making vegetables taste good and digest well - at least for me. Pates, loafs, burgers, chips, soups etc.

When it comes to fruit I need to combine them with some fat to feel good. Actually - usually the vegetables too I like with fat  - actually - in general I need a bunch of fat!

I think that's why I like being able to add the RAFs because I just have to eat sooooo much less and getting the fat I need is sooooooooo much easier. I doubt I could get enough really raw vegan and that might be why I couldn't go very long on it. Cooked vegan it was much easier for me to get more fat. I can't wait to see if RAFs makes a real difference in my being able to start and stay on a 100% raw diet and feel as good as I have before but stay it out for years instead of months.

I won't force myself to eat anything that my body doesn't want (except for my husband's sake) because of some idea - especially now that you have RAFs as an option. I mean - there is so much more to experiment with and all those ideas that we have been taught were the best for us have been debunked here in one way or another. Hanging out here I read amazing things, like people thriving with no fiber at all! This place sometimes feels like someone taking a nutcracker to my skull it opens my mind so much.

How do we know what will really be best for us 10, 20, or 30 years down the line? I think these days that the best we can do is take the options and ideas open to us and see what makes us feel the best now incorporating as much information and logic that we have accumulated. What Tyler did was so logical and straight forward. Without disease though, we can still see what makes us feel better and what makes us feel not as good. Not as clear cut though. I also learned about Instincto here which I can't wait to explore more with the wider and more varied diet choices I will have now going all raw again.

[billy4184]

Hi Dorothy,
I actually said that I like to eat a lot of vegetables!
I never had a problem with fiber but I need to increase slowly to change my bad habits. I mean, I'm trying to eat a gigantic salad with every meal and my gut ecosystem needs to acclimatise.
Life is a learning curve that never ends

[Dorothy]

I think I might still be confused Billy. You said that you aren't getting enough carbohydrates and need to increase your fiber right?

Vegetables have carbohydrates and fiber. Fruit of course does have more carbs than veggies. What kind of fiber and carbohydrates are you talking about then? How much do you think you need and why?

[HIT_it_RAW]

First, I don't have energy for quick, fast exercise.

For quick fast energy as you call it or anaerobic exercise as I would call it the body needs glycogen. On A ketogenic diet the body uses protein to manufacture glycogen. It is imperative that you eat enough protein on a ketogenic diet. The lower your carb intake the more protein is "wasted" for fuel so the more important this gets.

I tried both cooked and raw ketogenic diets and it works great for burning fat but you have to really monitor your intake. If both fat and prot are high enough I felt reasonable good. However intens anearobic workouts were suffering so I introduced a high carb(lots of low fiber high glycemic fruits) meal a few hours prior to working out. This solved those problems. Fruit is especially good for this since fructose get transformed to glycogen faster than other sugars.

Nowadays I eat a low carb raw diet. What I call low carb anyway. I eat one fruit a day and use some honey and dairy so I get enough carbs to stay out of ketosis.

I think the ability to revert to a ketogenic state, to use ketones to fuel certain tissue's instead of glucose, is an adaptation to lean times. The use of ketones means the body needs les glucose which means is has to cannibalise less protein(muscle). If your interested in this I advice you to read this
http://membres.multimania.fr/robody3/Ebooks/The_Ketogenic_Diet.pdf
Its about cooked ketogenic diets but the same macro-nutrient rules apply.

[billy4184]

Hi,
Sorry if I wasn't clear. What I'm saying is that I feel that I need as much carbohydrates as I can get on a true paleo diet, but that vegetables are the best source for me. Fruit has too much fructose which can't be stored anywhere except the liver, anyway apart from science I never felt good eating so much sugar, and I am looking out for my teeth. Therefore I'm trying to increase my capacity for vegetable fiber, because my guts are not used to it. I'm aiming for at least 100g of fiber a day from veggies, which is what seems to be the hunter-gatherer level. The rest of my nutrition I will try to get from meat and fat.
HIT_it_RAW, I understand that protein can be used for energy, but my own experience in ketosis was not extremely pleasant. I felt calm and not hungry, but lacking some `zing' and with a bit of the underwater feeling, like I'm not quite in contact with my surroundings. Maybe it gets better but I'm not convinced.
Also, I think that turning protein into glucose is an inefficient means of getting energy which places undue stress on the human body. Maybe this is what people refer to when they say that eskimos aged very rapidly. I am not at all well informed on this subject, but my own studies indicate that ageing is a process whereby the body tires itself out, so to speak, from metabolism, fighting disease, dealing with stresses in diet and the environment, etc. Since a protein expends a lot more heat than a carbohydrate in its metabolism, it might wear out the system a lot quicker, not to mention the process of turning it into fuel.
Therefore, my diet is plant-based, but not lacking in meat and fat.
I will study the link you sent me.
Cheers

[HIT_it_RAW]

Its not burning protein its converting it to glucose to feed certain tissue's (brain, nervous sytem) that cannot ustilise fat or ketones for fuel. If you eat at least 50 grams of carbs a day the body doesn't need to do this.

I'm aiming for at least 100g of fiber a day from veggies, which is what seems to be the hunter-gatherer level. The rest of my nutrition I will try to get from meat and fat.

Where did you get those figures? During an ice age one wouldn't that much fiber.

[billy4184]

"In general, the typical thermic effect of protein is 20%–35% of energy consumed and for carbohydrate, this number usually falls between 5% and 15%"


Thermic effect is the energy required for digestion, absorption and disposal. It is more difficult to digest and break down protein, and requires more energy. I know that protein itself cannot be burned, so I'm assuming that the burning of the resultant glucose is another matter. Even if it wasn't, protein still would take twice as much energy.

I understand that the body can run pretty well on just protein and fat, but I don't believe that it is optimal. I haven't yet seen a long-lived person who ate only these, and I have seen information indicating that eskimos do not have a very long lifespan.

About the amount of fiber, I've seen estimates of the Australian aboriginal diet which suggested around 80-120 grams depending on the season. Their type of diet, with lots of raw plants and fiber and small amount of meat, is what I'm trying to copy.

Dorothy had a thread with a vote about whether people were meant to live in the tropics, and I believe that they were, because its an environment most conducive to life. The eskimos were a group of people who managed to survive in some of the harshest conditions, and I don't think their diet was optimal.
Cheers

PS not sure why my whole text became a link, but anyways

[HIT_it_RAW]

The ability to withstand ketogenic diets is I think an adaptation to times like ice ages when people were forced to rely on animal products almost exclusively. I agree that it is not an optimal state. Most people seem to do better with a small amount of carbs.

About the amount of fiber, I've seen estimates of the Australian aboriginal diet which suggested around 80-120 grams depending on the season. Their type of diet, with lots of raw plants and fiber and small amount of meat, is what I'm trying to copy.

The australian climate may not be a good role model to use for paleo times.

[Dorothy]

The australian climate may not be a good role model to use for paleo times.

What climate do you think would be a good role model HIR?

[Dorothy]

Billy, the diet you are striving for is what I am naturally leaning towards as well. Eggs will be important for me as I take to them very well. I don't measure things so I won't know how many grams of what I will be eating unless I learn to.... but I bet I'm going to be skewed a good deal towards the carbohydrate/fiber end. Eating too much meat makes me feel exactly as you described. I want that high energy with the stabilization of raw animal foods - but what I am thinking that concentrated fats might be the most important aspect of RAFs for me. When I did an extremely short experiment of only a day or two with no carb, I felt sick for weeks afterward. It was extremely bad for me. I felt like my kidneys were being massively overwhelmed - like if I had eaten a toxin. I have been thinking that I probably did not eat enough fat and did not eat organs or the whole animal. Lex seems to think that is an important aspect to his success. I want to try basically 100% raw vegan with a variety of RAF added in small amounts to see if I can keep up the energy, joy and extreme health that I got short term on a raw vegan  for a year or two. Then, if that works, I will probably try Zero carb again but with at least 70% fat and the entire animal as close to how Lex does it as possible.

I am terribly curious if both extremes are just fine if done with enough fat or not, if it is individual, or if there is a certain key that would make both of them work well.

But then we go back to the question of how to know much of anything if I don't do it one way for many decades in a row? Does feeling really great for a couple of years make the case?

At the least I might make a case that at least one person can feel great eating two radically different paleo diets..... or not. Not many people here feel good from mostly plant foods yet I do, so ..... I can't help but to wonder how I would feel doing zero carb - but in the way that someone it does work for does it. First, I will start from the place that I assume will give me the highest chance of feeling the best from based on my previous experience as my first step.

I obviously am planning way ahead! 

[TylerDurden]

I think I had a previous discussion with wodgina, and the upshot of it was that the australian aboriginal diet was found to have some plant foods but to also have a lot of animal foods?

[HIT_it_RAW]

What climate do you think would be a good role model HIR?

well obviously that would very much depend on when and where. the last few 100.000 year the world has seen climate changes.

your body is totally tuned to eating raw plant food so I don't find it very surprising that zc didn't work for you. In time when you've become more accustomed to animal products and build the right gutflora things may be very different. Still every one should do what makes him/her feel good.

[Iguana]

Still every one should do what makes him/her feel good.

Wine, pizzas and macaronis made me feel very good! 

[Iguana]

PS not sure why my whole text became a link, but anyways

ROLF...  You're lucky it didn't become an horrendous small grey alien bound to abduct you 

[Dorothy]

Wine, pizzas and macaronis made me feel very good! 

That's it exactly Iguana! Coffee makes me feel more than good...... at first.

[Dorothy]

your body is totally tuned to eating raw plant food so I don't find it very surprising that zc didn't work for you. In time when you've become more accustomed to animal products and build the right gutflora things may be very different. Still every one should do what makes him/her feel good.

Actually for the last couple of years before landing here I was eating raw eggs, fish and dairy - at times lots. I think that's why I felt almost no change eating raw meat. I ate gads of meat trying to convince hubbie that it wouldn't kill a person. I didn't die or end up in the hospital and now he is buying, preparing and enjoying raw meat. It really suits him.

It was only eating nothing but red meat that made me feel badly and I realize that I did it improperly. I will never know what will really make me feel best long-term unless I keep on experimenting. I've been at this experimenting on myself thing for so long that it feels quite natural. I experiment on myself before even attempting to suggest anything to others. ZC might be exceedingly good for my husband and if it does nothing bad to me (like raw meat) then it might also be a good thing for him to try even if I end up eating more plant foods. Even if it's not the best for me, if it does me no harm, that says something.

I tried out all the cancer cures I gave to my dog and to my mother before giving it to them because I was stronger. Some of them made me too ill to even think about giving to them, but I could bounce back where they might not have been able to.

Just call me the living guinea pig.