I like this on the surface…but it completely ignores the LACK of satiety cues when wee eat refined foods and/or too many carbs. People start down the Ezekiel bread,oatmeal, brown rice & lentils highway and never come back. Quality and types of food DO matter.

I sometimes wonder whether the preoccupation with the subtleties of these diets (what you refer to as ‘minutia’ in your post) is counter-productive. I have been pre-occupied with having the perfect diet for 10 years now. 2 years ago I emerged from several years of a ‘perfect’ low fat diet. I exercised far too much, got less that 20% of calories from fat, but otherwise ate loads of vegetables, fruit and oats. I did not even eat bread. Needless to say, I was always hungry and carried a napsack full of fruit everywhere I went. My partner will tell you that I was a nightmare because I was so obsessive about eating regularly and eating exactly what I considered to be the right stuff at the right time.

Looking back, I think I was actually damaging myself in a way other than the obvious. I mean pychologically – I was just too uptight about the whole thing.

Now I am pretty much Paleo. But I am Paleo in a very Art De Vany way – I make it random. I have started to let circumstances create the randomness rather than contrive it. In other words, if we run out a certain food, I eat lots of what we do have instead. This may mean I eat 10 eggs in one day but I think nothing of it. Other days I get stuck with nuts and carrots. Sure, I try to buy in good quality meat and fish so that I have what I need most of the time – but when I get it wrong I don’t jump into the car and go buy some.

I figure that in the end it will all balance out anyway; but if the balance ends up being slightly wrong because I do not obsess over the detail, I wonder whether the fact that I am a more relaxed individual carries sufficient health benfits to make it a better path?

Methuselah
Pay Now Live Later

Methuselah-
There is no doubt one can obsess with this stuff. This is one issue I have with the Zone as it can just launch some folks into OCD activity…I think what you are describing is “orthorexia”…compulsive need to eat “correctly”. I don’t know what the right answer is here…some folks are quite sick from things like gluten and need to really pay attention to that lest they face serious health problems. Other folks can suck the life out of any situation.

It IS funny however that someone who does not eat a single healthy item and does not give a fuck what they eat is not singled out as “obsessively bad”…it does seem a double standard of sorts.

Ha! I’ll take any compliment I can get!
Robb

This is my first time at your site and I LOVE IT – I’ll never miss another post! I found you through Scott Kustes at Modern Forager – he did a guest interview at my blog (just posted it) and included a link to here.

Anyway, this post title caught my eye (I’m pretty big into WAP principles, because for the most part they just make common sense) and I’ve read each comment here, all so interesting! My question: you mentioned needing to take cod liver oil AND fish oil to get enough omega 3’s because of the A&D in c.l.oil. From what I’ve read, the natural A&D in c.l. oil is not harmful in fairly large doses (and even quite beneficial)…have you read differently?

Thanks!
Hey Kelly!!

Great site! You are right, natural vit A&D have a low relative toxicity as compared to synthetic forms but it makes me a little nervous to recommend that folks take 10-16g of EPA/DHA in a cod liver oil form. This is an absolutely stunning amount of fat soluble vitamins. It may in fact be fine…perhaps even beneficial…but that is a huge potential load to consume on a daily basis. I will do some more reading on this and see what I can track down. I do recall an account of Inuit who eat sparringly of polar bear and other arctic liver sources due to the very high levels of vit-A. This might be a good place to look.
Robb