Did you purposely write a preachy monologue and avoid refuting Alan’s specific quotations with research? Do you really think that Alan will read your opinion and say, gee, my last 2 decades in this industry can be catapulted into greatness by avoiding those evil grains? Good luck on getting a response to that.

Your last post was actually very decent. Try to hold on to the thought that intelligent arguments must be fairly void of emotional baggage. Stick to facts, research and so forth – and most of all, it’s important to accept new information as it is provided, and if coupled with enough science to back it up, to be able to change your current views – no matter how much you love them.

I don’t doubt that your Paleo approach worked for you and that’s great. Alan isn’t against Paleo per se, if that’s the way you like to eat and it gets you results.

However I believe that Alan and many others are extremely skeptical about the claims that it was your Paleo approach and some magical removal of grains or Fructose that brought forth your weight loss. Most likely is that fact that your understanding of the human body is not sufficiently deep enough to understand the full complexities that took place when you changed your diet.

I can cut carbs from my menu and drink a bit less water. I’ll lose inches off my waist, pounds of weight and look way better in just a few days. However I’m not goint to say that carbs somehow made me magically lose fat weight and get lean. Yet this is what 99% of people think when they start Keto for instance.

You appear to be smarter than that, so I truly do hope that you aren’t giving praise to Paleo or cutting of Fructose just because it was the first thing that truly made a difference in your weight.

But you seem like an intelligent man, so try to condense your entire post into a more compressed line of thought and try to add some studies or direct links to some articles in the interest of keeping this discussion going.

I understand that you have a lot to get off your chest, but this topic is too wide to simply tell everyone to “Check Out” a dozen different authors, trainers and books and whatnot. Try to keep it more compressed.

Give us a few direct studies, or articles by authors you appreciate and maybe we will all become smarter because of that. No-one here is above changing their opinion completely, if new evidence arises.

Anyways, aside from Lustig’s presentation on the health benefits/dangers of fructose, there’s a point that even he’s starting to miss. As Krieger (and even Chris Masterjohn, one of the biggest paleo community researchers) pointed out, insulin is NO longer the culprit for obesity. The shift is now onto leptin, an adipose hormone, and leptin resistance at its receptor site, namely in the brain. That is, the hypothalamus is not correctly perceiving the high levels of leptin in an obese individual, and physiologically interprets the fat cells as starving, leading to overeating/fatigue/under-exercising/cravings etc. Our long-term energy regulation is via our fat cell status, not what’s in our gut. Hence ppl realize they can boost leptin levels through certain macronutrients in a refeed. The caveat is a leptin-boosting dose of high carbs triggers satiety for a leptin SENSITIVE person (like a MB or Robb Wolf), NOT a leptin resistant individual. akin to insulin administration to Type 2 diabetics who are insulin resistant already. Again, read my first posts. I caution you to go off on your own reading ONLY pubmed studies of leptin, because it is a new hormone and very misunderstood. A great review book on leptin is Mastering Leptin by Byron Richards. He’s a long-time clinical nutritionist who’s probably “the leptin guy” right now as he’s reviewed roughly 15,000 leptin primary sources. He puts things in better perspective especially as no one else knows 2 cents about leptin. There are now MD’s/researchers who are putting his work into clinical translation and see excellent results on a patient level. One whose blog I actually follow on a daily basis is Jack Kruse, a neurosurgeon in Nashville who applied these leptin principles along with a paleo diet, and lost 135lbs in his 40′s. Of course his results are not why I follow him but his science:

His shorter explanation and review of leptin is 3 parts + a leptin Rx (advice on what to do). Part 1:
http://jackkruse.com/chapter-one-on-leptin/
I’m sure you can contact him or reply as he blogs often online and frequently answers q’s. He started his own company simply to optimize people’s nutrition, not to buy into any philosophy.

As for PALEO blogs, the best ones out there imo are Chris Masterjohn’s (who is completely unbiased as I mentioned before, he doesn’t specifically blame carbs for obesity) and J Stanton at Gnolls.org. They cite their works in their articles too, extensively.

Pertaining back to Lustig and the big pic, I understand fructose as directly triggering leptin resistance (there are many studies for this). The EXACT mechanism is not 100% clear but it seems to be the ability of fructose to be metabolized uncontrollably quickly in the liver into TriG’s, and inducing inflammation (desensitization/noise at leptin receptor site as one of the consequences). I did a thesis on fructose and know that the liver does not hold onto fructose in storage (like glycogen) and will metabolize it into glucose or TriG’s as fast as it can, leading to a rapid rise in postprandial TriG’s. That is why Lustig hints that fructose may be toxic, since the liver is acting on it like it does for alcohol/other toxins it does not want circulating. It is also fact that fructose contributes to AGE’s much more so than glucose (7x more i believe), which is why the older policy of advising diabetics (who already age fast due to high glycation from high blood glucose) to consume fructose was retarded by the ADA. I get that you’re saying moderation won’t kill you, of course, I have some fruit here and there too. But pampering HFCS in the eyes of confused and junk-food craved fat ppl (understand this is physiological NOT psychological, once you read about Jack Kruse’s blog and esp Mastering Leptin) only leads to them rationalizing to eat more of it.

This is recapping what my sources would advise, but in summary I believe if one moderates fructose consumption, avoids chronic high consumption of refined carbs/grains/PUFA’s (oxidized veggie oils), high stress or anything else leading to systemic inflammation, one can rid obesity. It just so happens paleo lifestyle CAN fit this primer and it must be tailored to your needs individually (not one-size fits-all). It is not because this Grok character is more fundamentally sound than the food pyramid that I follow Paleo personally. I feel even Paleo-ers don’t realize the benefits were hindsight after research was done confirming why this anthropological approach may work, esp for obese.

I don’t know if this satisfies your requirements or not, and I don’t know how to go about writing a defense since I’m not an author. Thats why my initial posts had little to do with actual policy but just advising you to be open-minded and study carefully your opponent’s basis, i.e. Paleo or w/e. Remember you are not acting out of belief (this is not religion or political cause) but only about what actually works. My entire family and I were obese. Believe me, we counted calories and exercised our heads off on countless diets. Yet we never blamed the FTO gene etc.. Obesity takes a toll on your life, personally, professionally and physically. Then seeing an ignorant trainer online or in real life belittle my efforts is infuriating, telling me to count my kcals. In fact I was so desperate that I took up amateur boxing while studying at Penn to train at the historic Joe Frazier’s boxing gym. I became a local amateur boxing champion during the 2006 Philadelphia Golden Gloves. It broke my own stereotypes about myself as an Asian American. Yet after I quit, I ballooned in weight once I stopped training like an animal, showing that even high level athletic nutrition wasn’t good enough for everyone. This is not something about discipline or willpower. Becoming an amateur boxing champion and studying my balls off to get into Penn (and medical school) already demonstrated that. This is my heaviest at 290lbs, mind u my boxing weight division was 165lbs:
http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v3854/38/29/624140224/n624140224_3072208_5746307.jpg

This is me about a year ago at 175lbs (I don’t have a current fb pic), I am about 8lbs leaner right now:
http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/36638_725863651267_618317_40972665_5922284_n.jpg

It was the first time in my life that I can actually eat to satiety, not exercise more than half an hr a day, and keep/lose weight effortlessly. The term effortlessly is foreign to obese ppl like my family. THAT is how I know leptin principles + paleo works. Anyone who forces their clients/patients to suck it up and lose weight the hard way doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Realize that ANYONE can lose weight itself, but keeping it off and preventing relapse hints at a deeper physiology than calories. Until you can consistently get morbidly obese ppl (who are simply motivated, not suicidal) to lose weight effortlessly and keep it off, you have not perfected your knowledge yet. and that’s fine, it’s how we learn.

As for my entering medicine, forget I even brought it up. It means jack shit by itself. However, I unfortunately (or fortunately?) believe that as an MD, ppl will automatically listen to me, whether I’m right or not. Most MD’s have forgotten how to think for themselves, and is why we’re even in this mess. It is the medical profession’s fault FIRST and FOREMOST for the sad state of obesity and all other modern diseases in the US, everyone else second. They sit there at the top unwilling to give any other research against their food pyramid a fair shake, then listen with all ears about what they agree about. It’s called hubris. This fallacy applies to anyone, including low-carbers. It’s why it started out as Atkins (eat all the chinese PUFA buffets you want as long as you don’t touch rice) but had to evolve to a tailored Paleo diet ranging from low carb whole sources of meat all the way to a Kitavan-style of 70% carbs based on tubers/vegs.

As for disparaging fitness trainers, I’m wrong. Many fitness trainers ARE clueless but some are a testament to the industry. One in particular is Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness. He reads other people’s works in nutrition in addition to analyzing raw studies. It was his constant evolution of his nutritional approach based on science and willingness to examine his mistakes that inspired me and changed my thinking about food. It was his attitude, unwillingness to belittle/write off his clients and innovative thinking that got me interested in nutrition to begin with. That led to nutritional therapy, holistic medicine and then western medicine. I didn’t start out premed, I wanted to be a banker and was well on my way until the end of college. My attitude doesn’t involve treading softly, I know I will have to incite alot of people in my career esp in the orthodox medical world. Just look at our current US Surgeon General, she’s obese but its obv out of lack of knowledge, not her willpower. While how to exercise isn’t even a secret anymore if you really look for it, nutrition still has ways to go. Take an enthusiastic look at what I listed to you Alan. I know it’s alot of links and a book, but realize you’re doing it solely for your own career and client’s benefit, NOT to prove me right/wrong. u don’t even know me. But think about this, what do i have to gain from this? self-aggrandizing? I’m a kid man, why would I care, I’m 23 and overworked, 120k in debt. fitness information isn’t my job. If i didn’t believe this cause was important for myself and family, I’d rather be chasing girls and making money than learning about leptin and writing at alanaragonblog.com. Arguing with trainers isn’t my hobby

Given this information may influence/change how you work with overweight clients, I think its a good investment of some time. You are in a position to change people’s lives now whereas I won’t be for another good decade. Best of luck and props for thinking independently to begin with. that is the rarest thing today, the ability to think for your own. most ppl just latch onto another’s ideas, hold on for dear life and call that conviction. it’s not conviction, it’s stupidity and its the 99%. I don’t expect a specific reply from you, after all it was more for your consideration in the long-run anyways (esp my first post). Should have been a PM. To everyone else, dont’care wont read. you’re just followers.

Please respond to this screen shot:

Dan is a Paleotard/Taubestard. It’s confirmed, look at his favorite books (Paleo Solution & GCBC):

http://www.facebook.com/danhantheman

Dan is a fan of Robb Wolf. Robb Wolf is a fan of AA’s work. Yet, Dan chooses to bash AA… Derp.

Haha, WOW. LMFAO!

@ Dan:

Robb Wolf is a fan of Alan’s writing. I guess he has bad judgement? As far as I know, Alan and Wolf have a mutual respect for each other. You appear to be a biased blowhard with a chip on his shoulder. By the way, 500K a year isn’t guaranteed to fix your anger and self esteem issues.