Day thirtyeight

Another tax issue has been resolved. I just got the notice from the IRS. Instead of $4,200 for TY2005, I owe $159. Wow! That's a big difference. This is a good day.

I will begin fasting tonight. In the meantime, I am eating my fill. I had a smoothie blended salad this morning and I am having another now. I also had a huge salad for lunch. I also had an apple with almond butter a few minutes ago. In addition to the bowl of black beans I had before that.

You get the idea. I am eating like a pig. But it's all good stuff. Whole, natural, plant-based foods.

I will fast for 120 hours from midnight tonight until midnight on Tuesday night. This time I will also do a 2 day refeeding period in which I will start out with high water content fruits and vegetables and gradually add other things until I end up eating legumes and whole grains by Thursday of next week, a week from today.

In the process I hope to drop another 10 pounds or so. I will keep you in the loop on that as it progresses.

I am also burning through the book The Pleasure Trap. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is looking at the issue of diet and exercise. It explains a lot. It provides a theoretical framework for why we are in the shape we are in. And how to get out of it.

Basically, humans have three basic motivations:

1. Maximize pleasure
2. Minimize pain
3. Avoid effort

Things which cause pleasure are things which enhance health and promote reproduction. The assumption of the organism is that you are dealing with an environment of scarcity. Thus, food, water, and mates are in short supply. You would experience pleasure then by consuming food containing a lot of calories since by so doing you would enhance your ability to survive and reproduce later.

In terms of nutrients, humans are motivated to seek out and consume three types of nutrition, all of which are very scarce in the environment:

1. Protein
2. Fat
3. Salt
4. Sugar

Any food that contains an abundance of these nutrients (within reason) is considered to be highly palatable. For example, chocolate is high in fat and sugar, and is thus highly palatable. Similarly potato chips are high in fat and salt and are thus highly palatable. Something like meatloaf or Texas style barbecue is high in all four classes of nutrients. We experience great pleasure when eating these foods.

Remember that we are supposed to live in relative scarcity. We should be eating lots of roots and berries. Once in a while, maybe we catch a fish or steal an egg, but the day-to-day existence is pretty much seeds, berries, tubers and such.

In our society we have made highly palatable food readily available for a very cheap price within a very short timeframe. The minimize effort drive is also satisfied. You do not even need to get out of your car.

The book also explains our process of becoming full. Even in environments of relative abundance, animals will not become obese. There is a suppressor mechanism that shuts off the drive to eat. This mechanism consists of three things:

1. Stretch response
2. Nutrient density sensitivity
3. yowel circuit

The stretch response is the nerves in the stomach that signal fullness. The nutrient density sensitivity is a sense of how "rich" (i.e. nutrient dense) a food is. And the yowel circuit is a set of nerves that tell the organism "You're Overweight Eat Less", or yowel for short.

We defeat these mechanisms in various ways. First, the stretch response is defeated by removing dietary fiber from the diet. An astonishing 4% of grain products consumed in this country are whole grain. The remaining 96% is basically white flour, having all or nearly all fiber removed. This gives the food far less bulk, thus not signaling the brain that you are full.

Second, the nutrient density sense is defeated because the range of sensitivity is relatively small. A fat content of 15% is very high in nature. Wild game contains this amount of fat, and that was basically the richest product that a primitive human could consume. We selective breed and artificially feed animals to produce fat content of 50%. Our sensitivity is simply not geared up to handle that amount of calories.

I am still reading how the yowel circuit works. I will update you on that when I get there.

At any rate, a very interesting book. The conclusion is the same. We need to stop consuming the following nutrients:

1. Meat, fish and fowl
2. Dairy and eggs
3. Refined carbohydrates
4. Refined oil
5. Recreational drugs including caffeine, alcohol and tobacco

Which leaves the following nutrients which we should consume in abundance:

1. Tubers
2. Legumes
3. Fruit
4. Vegetables
5. Whole grains
6. Nuts

The book advocates no portion control whatsoever. You eat as much as you want. You simply change what you eat. I like this approach actually.

It is slightly different from Dr. F. in that he attempts to control portion on some nutrients (no more than 1 ounce per day of nuts for example).

But the basic, core message is pretty much the same.

More later.