OT:Good Calories, Bad Calories....

Drowsy Dancer · Post by **Drowsy Dancer** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 5:26 pm

Kiralynx wrote:Then they hit what is called in the group, "the three month flare." This is the point at which the weak sisters among the bad bacteria have been starved out. The stronger ones remain, and they are demanding their accustomed foods.

How do gut bacteria cause a craving in their host?

2 B Sleeping Soundly · Post by **2 B Sleeping Soundly** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 6:49 pm

I just have to say a big Thank You to all of you posting in this thread. For me, it is one of the best OT threads I have ever read in my time here. I have found it extremely interesting and now have much research to do and books to buy/read to feed my new found interest. If possible, please continue to keep sharing your thoughts and experiences here in this thread (as your ideas and responses dictate). I am sure this will be a great source of information and inspiration for those looking at this dietary lifestyle, whether pro or con, for quite some time to come!

John

Muse-Inc · Post by **Muse-Inc** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 7:42 pm

nmevan wrote: I give people more credit. I think people are more intelligent and aware of what they are doing...and yet they still do unhealthy things to themselves. You can't tell me that if you know that you need to lose weight, that every time you eat a scoop of ice cream you don't realize that you're blowing it. No one is that out of it. And is it really because you've made previous bad choices and so your body is demanding more sugar and other junk? I don't buy it. I think that it has more to do with deep psychological issues.

In my case, the weight loss eating a la Zone stopped cold when my doctor put me back on BC pills to stop the horrible night sweats (soaked thru sheets and then blankets it was so bad, occurred multiple times/night) that made sleeping a real challenge, didn't matter how cold the room was...the joys of peri-menopause with its wildly swinging estrogen levels -- this was a decade before apnea made its appearance. Even rigid adherance to the eating plan was not working, I even swtiched to Atkins Phase 1...no wt loss. Added exercise...no wt loss. I was frustrated to say the least. In order to stop the night sweats I needed the hormones, but with them I couldn't lose wt. This was waay before I knew about topical progesterone, thyroid hormones, androgens, the dance amongst them all...I at least was taking fish oils . Was it some deep psych issues, no it about hormone balance and my docs at the time didn't know any more about that than I did...that knowledge was just not common back then.

EDIT: I was not pigging out on carbs, I just stopped losing.

idamtnboy · Post by **idamtnboy** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 9:01 pm

I've read or scanned most all the messages in this thread. Interesting comments are being made. There's a couple of aspects I haven't seen discussed very much, if at all. One is economics. We can talk all we want about going low carb and eating more healthy, but what about the cost factor? Every low cost meal I've ever seen is high carb. For those forum members who are on a very tight budget what low cost low carb options are there out there for them? For example, the other evening at our weekly church dinner we were served a very tasty vegetable soup, the main ingredients being carrots and potatoes. About the only real protein in it was some beans. Along with the soup was a white bread roll and cake and ice cream for dessert. Cost is a controlling factor, hence no meat in the soup.

The other factor that hasn't been discussed much is childhood conditioning. For example, I grew up poor. My mother cooked a lot of carbo meals, although we did have canned beef most of the time. Suppers were meat and potatoes, and breakfast was buttermilk pancakes or oatmeal. I grew up on a small farm. Her Finnish heritage emphasized a lot of grain products, again high carb. Even now, 60 years later, my eating habits are to a great extent compliant with the way I ate as a child. Changing that imprinted pattern isn't easy. I eat very little bread though now, and when I do it's mostly whole wheat or multi-grain.

I'm sure many others besides myself are faced with complications of conflicting diets with spouses. My wife should consume more calories than she does. But she has digestive issues so what she likes and can tolerate the best tend to be high carb, like pasta. She does not like, and has difficulty with, beef and pork, the stuff I would like to eat in place of pasta. So for me eating low carb means eating meals she can't. And the stuff she likes most is either high carb or stuff I don't like. As has been said, life is hard!

-SWS · Post by **-SWS** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 9:17 pm

I think those are good points, idamtnboy. I look forward to hearing advice and thoughts in response to your comments. I especially resonated with that last part---a spouse needing/wanting a different diet altogether.

I just now discovered low-carb dieting can be done frugally:
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=p ... 22&bih=656

BlackSpinner · Post by **BlackSpinner** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 9:36 pm

idamtnboy wrote:I've read or scanned most all the messages in this thread. Interesting comments are being made. There's a couple of aspects I haven't seen discussed very much, if at all. One is economics. We can talk all we want about going low carb and eating more healthy, but what about the cost factor? Every low cost meal I've ever seen is high carb. For those forum members who are on a very tight budget what low cost low carb options are there out there for them? For example, the other evening at our weekly church dinner we were served a very tasty vegetable soup, the main ingredients being carrots and potatoes. About the only real protein in it was some beans. Along with the soup was a white bread roll and cake and ice cream for dessert. Cost is a controlling factor, hence no meat in the soup.

Yes cost was the major factor in my going back to eating carbs after I lost my job. There is only so many cans of tuna or sardines one can eat on a week and pasta can stretch a can to 2 meals. Pork is cheaper then beef or chicken and sometimes came on sale for $2 a pound. By investing in a second hand freezer were were able to stock up on turkeys and hams on the christmas sales. Pork however is a meat that many people can't eat due to allergies and of course if you keep kosher/hallal it is totally out. Now that I am in Edmonton I am glad I don't have to try to live to that budget because everything here is much more expensive. Like $7 for a pound of brand name butter, $12 for 3 chicken breasts and the cheapest I have seen pork is $4.50 a lb.

Lizistired · Post by **Lizistired** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 10:00 pm

Yikes Blackspinner!
I just cooked a whole 5 lb cut up chicken I bought for $5. I do find that I like the cheaper cuts now. More fat... Shhhhh. Let the butcher makes his/her profits off those lean cuts.

hades161 · Post by **hades161** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 10:05 pm

I spent a few years being homeless or squatting. Church meals, Food Pantries, Salvation Army meals and Food Share programs was what I and many other people depended on. A lot of people think when you become homeless that your alone or isolated but food needs bring people together like nothing else will. The information on where to dumpster dive for food and when, were to get medical help, how to get into a shelter or what shelters are good or bad, how to get monetary assistance, people you can get a day job from for cash, what homes are open to sleep in, places people who will let you couch it for a time, transportation if you wanted to try another area all gets shared around those Church / Salvation Army tables during meal time. Some of the most selfless people I ever met where homeless and yes sadly some of the most selfish people too.
During this time the most abundant and given away food products were Bread and Bakery products. Most food pantries were so over stocked with cakes and donuts and bread that it was free to take in unlimited amounts. Church meals / Salvation Army meals are typically high carb, some veg, with little in the way of real meat. When trading for food with others Bread and Baked goods had little value. Things like Meat and Fruit though where most popular. Cans of Dinty Moore type stews were in high demand. Doing low carb with little or no income and getting food from these sources normally made Low Carb or any real "diet" nonsense you eat what you got and tried to get better. When someone said "Let them Eat Cake" the homeless and low income people really understands what that means.

When I was doing Atkins before my homeless stint, the cost of going "Low Carb" was pretty comparable to eating out all the time. When my income went down it was still viable with hunting around a bit for deals, watching for sales, and getting to know the "Meat Turnover Rate" in a few of the local Supermarkets. When you know when Steak is going to on sale on the second Thursday of every month for a store its easy to stock up and get good steak/meat cuts at low prices for freezing. Every store is a bit different though and when you find a store you like for meat its best to get to know the people at the counter. Ask them what sells, how the turnover is on the cuts of meat you like, whats the best days for freshly cut meat, normally they are happy to tell you the wheres and whens so you can target the sales and get good cuts at good prices. This was a few years ago though and food costs have gone up.

I have tried Juice Fasting recently and made it 10 days on a pure Fresh Juice fast. It was by far more expensive then anything else I have tried to date. I bought a mid line Juicer for 99$ and tried 3 organic Carrots and 1 Apple juiced as a base with other random greens thrown in at times 4 to 8 times a day plus at least 64oz of water a day. The first 3 days were the worst and the first 3 after ending the fast slowly. Cost was 200$ plus at least for the 10 day veggy fast with deals. Results? I lost a lot of junk from my bowels in those first 3 days with fasting flu after that it was pleasant with no real cravings. After the time period was up and I broke fast, even though I did so slowly on Veggy slurries and small salads the next 3 days after I got fasting flu again. This was my first time trying it so that had a lot to do with it and as far as weight loss goes I really can't report much as I can only get weighed at the Doctors Office. During the month I did that fast though I was able to break with the soda/ caffeine and went the rest of the month and most of the next month happily drinking just water and having few cravings.

Kiralynx · Post by **Kiralynx** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:04 pm

Drowsy Dancer wrote:

How do gut bacteria cause a craving in their host?

Change Your microflora, Change your tastebuds!
http://www.healthykitchen.co.nz/webapps ... 422/325823

A 1994 review of Elaine Gottschall's book:
http://crohns.net/Miva/education/about_ ... tion.shtml

Another review
http://www.livestrong.com/article/53758 ... -bacteria/

There's quite a bit of material in Elaine Gottschall's book on the brain / bowel connection, too much for me to re-key without violating copyright.

Basically, bacterial byproducts affect the brain.

nmevan · Post by **nmevan** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:11 pm

jnk wrote:

Perhaps a simple illustration will help.

Imagine that the water system of your body (in many ways a much simpler system than the energy system) suddenly went haywire in such a way that you never got the urge to urinate and you never got thirsty. Or that you constantly had the urge to urinate and were constantly thirsty. Imagine that you were forced then to consciously keep track of exactly how much sweating you did during the day (factoring in temperature and relative humidity) and how much urine you eliminated (by measuring it exactly) and then had to formulate to the milliliter how much water to take in to match what you put out day-to-day. Imagine that if you got it wrong, that water would be stored in a dangerous way inside your body somewhere over time in a way that made it difficult to get to later, or that a series of miscalculations that led to a shortage would, over time, grind you to a halt. How easy would it be for you to keep track of all that consciously and to decide how to act on it moment to moment?

Fortunately, we don't have to do that. For must of us, the body's water system is working properly, and the system isn't that touchy, sensitive, and critical on that level. We have thirst and a bladder and a nervous system and hormones that pretty much keep track of the water inside us and take care of things automatically, and we are able to read our signals and react accordingly under most normal circumstances. And even when we get it wrong, the body helps tip us off and the excess water is eventually released easily enough or the water shortages get solved in short measure with a few gulps.

The energy system in some humans is almost as efficient as that. It is mostly automatic in a way that they don't have to think about it. They get hungry when they need calories, they crave the correct foods, and their bodies are efficient at getting nutrients from what they eat and then getting rid of what is not needed. That is great. We should all be happy for the people like that. Good for them. But when a human body develops certain problems and sicknesses, that very complicated system can go awry. When people get overly tired and sleepy and stressed and panicked, some of them have bodies that interpret that as a lack of energy and then send constant, loud signals demanding high-energy foods. The body may develop cravings for certain nutrients but then isn't able to clearly get a message to the conscious mind about what exactly, and the wrong foods are eaten. Then the body screams out for the person to try some other food, or to simply eat more, to see if it can get what it needs from that. Over and over. Then some bodies go into a panic mode and start storing when they should be eliminating. When it all gets out of whack far enough, a person finds himself in a position where he can't trust any of the messages being sent him from his body. It is all short-circuited. Then he cannot, like the humans without that problem, live his life normally at all. No one has the mental and emotional energy, or the ability, to completely ignore every signal from his own body. If he did, he wouldn't eat at all, or he would eat all the time, or he would have no idea when, what, or in what amount to eat, since nothing quiets the screams. And measuring water to the milliliter based on sweat and urine would be infinitely simpler than what it would take to keep track of every nutrient the body needs and what it would take to meet the energy needs moment-to-moment all day long consciously.

A person whose body is not having that problem can decide to eat ice-cream and not worry. His body can handle it and will adjust the messages it sends later accordingly. No willpower involved or needed. And willpower alone is enough for him if an occasional errant message is received. He ignores it awhile and it goes away. His body isn't sending him completely haywire signals loudly all day long that would take truck-loads of extra-human willpower to ignore or to reinterpret. Someone who has not experienced what it is like to live in that kind of malfunctioning body has no idea what it is like and may assume that all humans have as efficient and as easy-to-manage an energy system as his body has. I cut those people slack when they don't understand the tribulations of those with medical conditions that cause energy problems. There is no way they can understand what it is like. Their ignorance is understandable. If they had any idea how stupid they sound telling other people what they need to do to manage their energy system, when it is nothing like theirs, they would know to be embarrassed by their own words. But they don't know. So just ignore them. Or laugh. Or stick your tongue out at them when they aren't looking. They aren't idiots any more than we are. Just ignorant. How could they possibly understand that not everyone is like them?

A low-carb diet, especially if it has a temporary drastic phase to it, has been shown, anecdotally, to be a useful tool for some for resetting their bodies' communication system as it relates to energy intake. It works for some. Not for others. But anyone who has to consciously decide what to eat and how much and when, because his body's energy-communication system has been damaged or circumvented internally, needs to make sure he is careful and balanced and getting the right nutrients long-term if he decides to consciously do things to lose weight. That is true of any diet in which the conscious mind has to play a large role in overruling the messages from within, not just the various low-carb diets.

In my opinion.

Did you ever have a professor who assigned a somewhat lengthy essay to be read...and somewhere, usually about three-quarters through the essay, there was a sentence claiming that if you've read this far the prof would buy you a beer? I'm afraid that wasn't the case here. Now where is that chunky monkey?

jnk · Post by **jnk** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:41 pm

nmevan wrote: Did you ever have a professor who assigned a somewhat lengthy essay to be read...and somewhere, usually about three-quarters through the essay, there was a sentence claiming that if you've read this far the prof would buy you a beer? I'm afraid that wasn't the case here. Now where is that chunky monkey?

Come on down. I'll buy you a Brooklyn Lager at 68 Jay St.

deltadave · Post by **deltadave** » Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:57 am

jnk wrote:
nmevan wrote: Did you ever have a professor who assigned a somewhat lengthy essay to be read...and somewhere, usually about three-quarters through the essay, there was a sentence claiming that if you've read this far the prof would buy you a beer? I'm afraid that wasn't the case here. Now where is that chunky monkey?
Come on down. I'll buy you a Brooklyn Lager at 68 Jay St.

Do they make a Creatine Shake?

Drowsy Dancer · Post by **Drowsy Dancer** » Sun Mar 18, 2012 7:04 am

Kiralynx wrote:
Drowsy Dancer wrote:

How do gut bacteria cause a craving in their host?
Change Your microflora, Change your tastebuds!
http://www.healthykitchen.co.nz/webapps ... 422/325823

Not seeing a good explanation of the science here. I was more looking for something like this, only newer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 5-0117.pdf This one is from 1991, and says, basically, we don't know how the flora work.

Kiralynx wrote: A 1994 review of Elaine Gottschall's book:
http://crohns.net/Miva/education/about_ ... tion.shtml

Does not explain how remaining bacteria can create cravings in the host after three months.

Kiralynx wrote:
Another review
http://www.livestrong.com/article/53758 ... -bacteria/

Does not explain how remaining bacteria can create cravings in the host after three months.

Kiralynx wrote:There's quite a bit of material in Elaine Gottschall's book on the brain / bowel connection, too much for me to re-key without violating copyright.

Basically, bacterial byproducts affect the brain.

Can you summarize (which would not violate copyright) her description of how remaining bacteria create cravings in the host after three months?

Thanks, that will be a good start for my research. I have questions about the length of time of the effects cited, but I am not rejecting it out of hand. I am also not questioning in the slightest the benefit to you of the SCD. I am simply trying to understand the assertion about new? additional? renewed? stronger cravings for certain foods after a delay.

-SWS · Post by **-SWS** » Sun Mar 18, 2012 7:21 am

Kira, as I understand it the term "gut" encompasses the enteric system. The enteric system is often informally referred to as our "second brain"----given that the enteric system produces what are often called "gut reactions". An example of a "gut reaction" would be that "butterflies in the stomach" feeling.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sa=X&ei=4 ... 22&bih=656

I was wondering if any of those authors contend that altering intenstinal flora might also alter our moods or feelings as well. If so, I wonder how that might affect drive to eat and adherence to diet. I'm wondering if there are more complex gut-flora behavioral dimensions than basic appetite.

nmevan · Post by **nmevan** » Sun Mar 18, 2012 8:15 am

jnk wrote:

Come on down. I'll buy you a Brooklyn Lager at 68 Jay St.

Thanks for the offer. I'll take you up on it if I ever get to the east coast. How many carbs in a Brooklyn Lager?

OT:Good Calories, Bad Calories....

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