Paleo Lifestyle Change?

You can do your own homework.

I've done my home work, I was just curious if you had to, or if you were just peeking over the shoulder of one of the other misinformed members!

Atkins doesn't eliminate carbs. You are eating, or should be, eating a lot of vegetables along with your proteins and fats for the first few weeks.

Then you start upping your carb counts slowly all the while adding back in higher carb vegetables, fruits, nuts / seeds, dairy, grains.

Get your facts straight before stating incorrect information.

P.S - There is NO physiological NEED for carbs in the human diet. We don't need them to survive.

"The minimum recommended intake of carbohydrates necessary for survival is 130 grams or 520 kcal per day."

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/humansciences/content/carbohydrate

The Atkins diet requires less than that in the first phase:

What You Can Eat and What You Can't

The first part of the plan, called the induction phase, has these rules:

No more than 20 grams of carbohydrates per day, mostly from certain vegetables
Protein and fat from poultry, fish, eggs, red meat, butter, and vegetable oils
No pasta, bread, grains, fruit, starchy vegetables, or dairy other than butter, cheese, and cream
No nuts, seeds, or legumes like beans
No caffeine
No alcohol

Next comes the "ongoing weight loss" stage, when you slowly add more vegetables, and you can include seeds, nuts, legumes, berries and other fruit, wine and other low-carb alcohol, and whole grains.

After that, to help keep the weight off, you may be able to eat more carbs and add more foods to your diet, depending on your body's needs.

http://www.webmd.com/diet/atkins-diet-what-it-is

Not sure how they found that 130 number -- I definitely am interested in learning more about how they calculated that.

I've been eating well below 130/day for two years, so I'm thinking that there must be some other factors or caveats involved with that.

The 130 number is what the brain requires to function properly.

http://medquarterly.com/mq88/index.php/n-biochemphysio/article/28-metabolism

Not sure how they found that 130 number -- I definitely am interested in learning more about how they calculated that.

Around 20g/day you limit the need for stripping nitrogen out of muscle tissue.
Around 50g/day you limit the need for stripping amino acids out of muscle tissue.

A minimally-acceptable level of exercise (e.g. 2 hours of casual walking around throughout the course of a day) will burn about 60g worth of glycogen, which needs to be replenished.

50 + 60 -> 110

That gets you in the ballpark, fine tune for size and other minor details from there.

And daily your liver can produce more than that through gluconeogenesis, so why do we need to ingest this through dietary carbs?

Already answered. Your body cannot metabolize either fat or protein quickly enough to support gluconeogenesis through ingesting food alone. Which means that if you aren't eating enough carbs to support your activity level, your body is going to cannabilize it's own protein stores - namely, muscle mass.

There seems to be a general lack of understanding of the rates the various biochemical processes inside the human body run at. Without that understanding, all kinds of really bad dietary decisions can be made.

What are you basing your assumption on - please post a link to the study for our perusal.

Atkins doesn't eliminate carbs. You are eating, or should be, eating a lot of vegetables along with your proteins and fats for the first few weeks.

Then you start upping your carb counts slowly all the while adding back in higher carb vegetables, fruits, nuts / seeds, dairy, grains.

Get your facts straight before stating incorrect information.

P.S - There is NO physiological NEED for carbs in the human diet. We don't need them to survive.

"The minimum recommended intake of carbohydrates necessary for survival is 130 grams or 520 kcal per day."

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/humansciences/content/carbohydrate

The Atkins diet requires less than that in the first phase:

What You Can Eat and What You Can't

The first part of the plan, called the induction phase, has these rules:

No more than 20 grams of carbohydrates per day, mostly from certain vegetables
Protein and fat from poultry, fish, eggs, red meat, butter, and vegetable oils
No pasta, bread, grains, fruit, starchy vegetables, or dairy other than butter, cheese, and cream
No nuts, seeds, or legumes like beans
No caffeine
No alcohol

Next comes the "ongoing weight loss" stage, when you slowly add more vegetables, and you can include seeds, nuts, legumes, berries and other fruit, wine and other low-carb alcohol, and whole grains.

After that, to help keep the weight off, you may be able to eat more carbs and add more foods to your diet, depending on your body's needs.

http://www.webmd.com/diet/atkins-diet-what-it-is

Not sure how they found that 130 number -- I definitely am interested in learning more about how they calculated that.

I've been eating well below 130/day for two years, so I'm thinking that there must be some other factors or caveats involved with that.

The 130 number is what the brain requires to function properly.

http://medquarterly.com/mq88/index.php/n-biochemphysio/article/28-metabolism

The amount of carbs required for the brain to function properly is ZERO. Only 15% or less of brain cells NEED glucose to function and guess what, the liver can manufacture protein into glucose, so NO NEED for carbs.

Gluconeogenesis - wow isn't the body a wonderful thing. And guess what as long as you're eating enough dietary protein, it doesn't even touch your lean mass.

As I said, it is a STRESS response. So on one hand you could say we need not eat carbs because our body can make it's own glucose, or you could say, glucose is so important that if we are in a situation where we can not get any from food our body will make it's own at all costs. My only point is, we should not be so ready to jump to the conclusion that our bodies have absolutely no physiological need for carbs.

STRESS is that your interpretation or do you have some study I can read?

Also just out of interest - You look in really good shape and I bet your quite healthy- how long have you been healthy for?

Hi everyone. I am seriously considering transitioning into a paleo lifestyle. I don't know that I can cut out grains completely, I love my brown rice & occasionally whole wheat pasta & cereal, but I can definitely cut back. Everything that I have been reading about it seems to be great. I have GERD & I've read a lot of reviews that adopting the paleo lifestyle not only cleared it up, but also cleared up a whole slew of other health issues that they had as well. Has anyone adopted the Paleo lifestyle here & can you please tell me what your experience has been by doing so? I'd appreciate your feedback.

Thanks!!
Tiff

As someone who dealt with a plethora of GERD/LPR issues over years, I can tell you that this isn't a bad start and will certainly help with inflammation issues, but the thing that REALLY helped me was focusing on restoring proper gut function through HCl supplementation, digestive enzymes and high quality probiotics.

If you're interested in more information I'd be happy to share it with you!

When enough protein is consumed, gluconeogenesis can supply all the glucose the body requires while still maintaining lean body mass.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7351177

The subjects were both sedentary and obese.

People in that condition can eat not only zero carb, but zero protein and zero fat and still be fine.

When enough protein is consumed, gluconeogenesis can supply all the glucose the body requires while still maintaining lean body mass.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7351177

The subjects were both sedentary and obese.

People in that condition can eat not only zero carb, but zero protein and zero fat and still be fine.

Not really, it's takes 1.6g's of protein to be converted to 1g of glucose and if no food whatsoever is consumed then lean mass is required for function. the egg protein did it's job in this scenario. i would have to look at trained people, but I would suspect that the only extra afford would be a higher consumption of protein to help stay in nitrogen balance, but I'm not sure.

The thread is long gone... might as well discuss...

When enough protein is consumed, gluconeogenesis can supply all the glucose the body requires while still maintaining lean body mass.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7351177

The subjects were both sedentary and obese.

People in that condition can eat not only zero carb, but zero protein and zero fat and still be fine.

Not really, it's takes 1.6g's of protein to be converted to 1g of glucose and if no food whatsoever is consumed then lean mass is required for function. the egg protein did it's job in this scenario. i would have to look at trained people, but I would suspect that the only extra afford would be a higher consumption of protein to help stay in nitrogen balance, but I'm not sure.

That's how I read the abstract too.

I'd still be interested in learning more about the long term impact of a carb-free lifestyle.

My understanding has been that using glycogen from protein builds up toxins that can damage the liver and that the brain requires a level of glycogen that can't be met with fat alone. Sure, in the short-term survival situation we can adapt, but there are long-term effects to excluding one of the three macro-nutrients.

I'm not sure about toxins and liver damage, I've not heard of that, but there may be concerns. Also being in ketosis doesn't mean no carbs.....some trained athletes can consume 100g of carbs and still be in ketosis, most people could probably consume 50+ and still be in ketosis. Maybe look at populations that might live this way and look at their health, the Inuit for example, they seemed to thrive pretty well for the majority of the year considering they've been around 30-40,000 yrs. Anyway gluconeogenesis happens 24 hours a day regardless, so I would imagine the body doesn't see this as minor phenomena that could cause damage. But I really don't know, just a guess.

I'm not sure about toxins and liver damage, I've not heard of that, but there may be concerns. Also being in ketosis doesn't mean no carbs.....some trained athletes can consume 100g of carbs and still be in ketosis, most people could probably consume 50+ and still be in ketosis. Maybe look at populations that might live this way and look at their health, the Inuit for example, they seemed to thrive pretty well for the majority of the year considering they've been around 30-40,000 yrs. Anyway gluconeogenesis happens 24 hours a day regardless, so I would imagine the body doesn't see this as minor phenomena that could cause damage. But I really don't know, just a guess.

Because the climate of the Arctic is ill-suited for agriculture and lacks forageable plant matter for much of the year, the traditional Inuit diet is unusually low in carbohydrates and high in fat and animal protein. In the absence of carbohydrates, protein is broken down in the liver through gluconeogenesis and utilized as an energy source. Inuit studied in the 1970s were found to have abnormally large livers, presumably to assist in this process. Their urine volumes were also high, a result of the excess urea produced by gluconeogenesis.