Here's why vegans are typically so freezing cold

Hi there everyone,

Around a month ago I was freezing all the time. I was complaining to the maintenance people here that the room is freezing cold to the point that they had to raise the temperature for the whole floor such that me, Aviel will stop shivering...

I didn't understand it, how could I be cold? I mean I was running 8 Km at that stage, my body must have been warm - shouldn't running raise up metabolism? Well the answer is No!

I had to urinate multiple times per night - I didn't understand why.

It continued like this on and on till I read "The Vegan Solution - Why the Vegan Diet Often Fails and How to Fix It" by Matt Stone !! then it stopped!!!

Let me cut it to the chase - It's the reduced metabolic rate!! Vegans don't eat enough calories. They are busying themselves with micro nutrients, organic or not, fiber and all that but they forget about the first thing that counts - Calories - you should have enough calories to have your machine work.

Here are the symptoms for low metabolism as Matt enumerates them:

1. Thinning hair, dry hair or hair loss
2. Slow finger nails growth or cracked/brittle nails.
3. Dry skin esp near the hands and lower legs and feet.
4. Thinning eye brows.
5. Slow growing leg hair & beard.
6. Loss of menstrual cycle.
7. PCOS
8. Infertility, miss-carriage, pregnancy complications.
9. Constipation.
10. Bloating or delayed stomach entine.
11. Irritable bowel syndrom or small intestine bacterial growth (SIBO)
12. Heart burn, indigestion, nausea after eating.
13. Dry mouth.
14. Excessive thirst.
15. Frequent urination, night time urination, strong sudden urges to urinate.
16. Belly fat esp w low muscle mass and poor strength.
17. Puffy eyes
18. Water retention.
19. Low platelets. 
20. Low red cell count.
21. Low white cell count.
22. Low sperm count.
23. Reduced size of testis.
24. Low testosterone.
25. Low progesterone.
26. Adrenal fatigue
27. Tooth decay and sensitivity.
28. Anxiety.
29. Depression
30. Insomnia.

And there are more - way more.

Many people on many diets experience suppressed metabolism issues, not only vegans - they low fat, low carb, low calorie tend to shutdown thyroid function.

He's listing the mistakes that vegans do and I agree that I do many of these 'mistakes' and yes - there's a point to consider correcting some of these mistakes. Here's the list:

• Not consuming enough calories - When you diet is vegetables based, even if you eat tons of vegetables - your calorie intake shall be small. You can fill your stomach, feel as if you are not hungry and you can do that on very low calorie intake.
• The cruciferous vegetables that are promoted by vegans because of their miraculous anti cancer capabilities have an enzyme called goitrogen which interferes with the formation of thyroid hormone in people with iodine deficiency. And guess what? Strictly nutritarian vegans don't consume salt and ARE iodine deficient... The good news is that cooking these cruciferous vegetables for 30 minutes can significantly reduce the amount of goitrogens but most vegans and raw-foodists insist on eating these things raw.
• Eating too many nuts and seeds as well as Avocados. These foods contain linoleic acid (LA). It's an omega 6 fatty acids which makes the ratio between omega 6 and omega 3 too high. LA also is known for suppressing the thyroid function.
• Consuming too many vegetable oils. These oils also contain considerable amounts of LA.
• Cleansing, fasting and detoxing thus lowering metabolic rate.
• Consuming too many watery foods, such as veggies, water melons, fruits. The high water content feels you up w/o many calories. The water itself is lowering the body temperature.
• Drinking too much water and herbal teas - for the same reasons.
• Consuming too little sodium. Sodium is the primary electrolyte in the extra-cellular fluid and is involved in fluid balance and blood pressure control. 
• Doing too much exercise. Many vegans are doing too much exercise cause they believe the more the better, they believe they raise their metabolism - quite the contrary - yes while exercising the body metabolism rise but then, after exercise it drops and I experienced this personally.
• Eating too many raw foods. Eating raw food means chewing a lot, consuming your calories very slowly so at the end of the day you don't get enough calories. Cooked foods are easy to consume so you get you calories faster.
• Not eating enough protein, 
• Consuming too many beans and legumes. 
• Consuming too little B12.

1. 
   

Stress is a great opponent to metabolism. When stress hormones become elevated, body temperature tends to fall, stress hormones constrict the blood vessels in your extremities making the hands, feet, nose, ears especially chilly. Stress hormones are also diarethic making you want to empty you bladder no matter if it's full or not.

I experience this stress rush about one month ago. I was still in the cold state, w/o too many calories and then at that point I was exposed to some scary something that I wouldn't go into details here. I remember how I could feel my adernaline rush, my anxiety rising immediately to new heights, and then the shivering effect, I was trembling, shivering, I had to wear my coat...  till that point that I understood that there's no threat and it was back to 

He suggests to forget about Joel Fuhrman's equation where you want to maximize N/C (nutrients/ calories). 

Instead he suggests the following equation:

Metabolic Increase = (calories + carbs + salt) / (volume + water content). In other words he's saying that you want to have more calories, carbs and salt per volume and water content of food that you ingest.

He's saying that he too came from this school of thought were any refined food like dry fruit was sub optimal, any form of salt is toxic and if you ate any amount of cooked food you were not quite ready to go all raw yet. But then when he talked to his raw-foodist friends they told him that just sprinkling a little bit of salt on their evening salad can improve his sleep significantly, he tried it and it succeeded.

So my take from all of this is not to exaggerate with the low calorie concepts - I should still have my metabolism working. And this is also one of the reasons I decided to double my fats consumption - instead of 50 grams a day of nuts & seeds - I consume now 100 grams per day. And yes, now my body can burn calories and I am no longer cold.

Yes, whatever Matt is saying is against calorie restriction but actually we should think and re-think calorie restriction - they are lowering the body temperature, the are living the life of a slaw, dead people walking... - and I am not sure if it makes sense.

As I said - this blog is all about my journey into health, longevity and fitness. I started it as a fat slob, I tried the weight watchers approach for a month, I changed to Joel Fuhrman and I now add some calories and less icy blue water.

I highly recommend this book to vegans, raw foodist and health nuts - read it before it shall be too late.

Aviel.

The single most potent advice I can give you

Hi there folks,

If you are following a diet, be it nutritarial diet or any other diet and you are always hungry then let me help you - it's most probably your hunger. It's your false hunger to be more precise.

Let me expalin.

A friend who is following the nutritarial diet asked me today how come he is following the G-BOMB diet, eating his salads and still he has these food cravings? Why is he hungry all the time? After 2 minutes I think I found the root cause and I want to share it with you.

When we eat - we feel great, we get our nutrition back, it feels good, great and suiting. That's very nice. Then about 2 hours later - we feel what we call 'hunger'. During these 2 hours the body was busy digesting - that's the anabolic stage.

Then starts the catabolic stage. The body has already digested the food and is now using the fuel. This is the stage where the body is busy detoxifying and yes it is during this stage that we get this un comfortable feeling. Especially if we ate processed foods - we built up lots of toxic free radicals and moving them around, cleansing makes us feel bad temporarily.

My advice to you - DON'T START EATING AGAIN! Let the body detoxify, let it heal, let it do what it needs to do.

Look - the body is like a programmed washing machine. When it's done digesting it starts dealing with this and then with that and then yet with that function but when you pour in some more food then the body stops whatever it was busy doing, goes back to square 1 and starts digesting. It doesn't digest and detoxify at the same time - it focuses the energy on digestion. It takes so much energy that you feel sleepy. 

So I am saying 'HOLD IT!' - Don't, don't, don't eat !!

Get rid of those cravings - how about breakfast at 8, lunch at 2 and dinner at 8 with no nothing in between? yes I mean it - don't snack between meals, don't drink coffee, and of course no coffee with milk even if it's soy milk duh. Don't be a faggot! Just STOP EATING and let your body STARVE for a change.

It won't starve - don't worry - it won't. Cause this uncomfortable feeling that you get? it's not true hunger - this is false hunger.  You will know true hunger. In time you will know - but for now, trust me, you haven't felt true hunger since you were a baby. Just hold on.

And yes the first 3 days are gonna be tough on you Mister fat slob, hu humm - they are going to be hard on you. But then you will get over it. You will be freeeee from all the food cravings and addictions.

Do yourself a BIG FAVOR and stop TORTURING yourself by eating 'only this small banana cause it's healthy' or drink 'only this tea cause it is so healthy'. Yea right - stop all of these excuses and avoid touching food or drink except cold or warm water till the next meal.

Remember that book you got from weight watchers telling you how important it is to avoid hunger and how important it is to have your afternoon snack? Remember that book??? Well throw it. Yes, do it right now, take it from the shelf and throw that book in the garbage. You will do yourself a big big favor. 

Don't be afraid of hunger. Hunger is your friend! When you feel that false hunger - you know that right now your body is busy detoxing, building, healing. Embrace this hunger - it's a good sign.

Stop torturing yourself with those silly candies, coffee breaks and snacks - be a man! Eat only during your meal and nothing, absolutely nothing so help me God between meals.

Love,

Aviel.

Lost 37 Kgs in 4 months

Hi everyone :)

Well time for a toast...

4 months ago I was a fat slot. I weighted 139.6 Kilograms, My BMI level was categorized "Morbid obesity" and I was "diagnosed" as diabetic. "Metabolic Syndrome" - the doctor said. It was then that I started my diet. First 1.5 months under the umbrella of weight watchers and then I read the book "The end of diabetes" and  switched to Dr. Fuhrman's  nutritarial vegan diet. My diabetes was wiped and my cholesterol as well as my triglycerides levels dropped significantly. I an physically active, running, walking, lifting heavy weights. I enjoy preparing my food and enjoy it even more when others are enjoying my food. Overall I would say - most recommended!!

My special lady was kind enough to use her GIMP skills again and edit this pic here.

Am I getting too skinny? Don't be shy you can tell me...

Aviel.

You wouldn't get the following essential nutrients from the nutritarial vegan diet!!

Hi everyone,

After dieting for 4 months - it's time to review my daily intake - is it enough? is it too much?

A decade ago I was growing aquatic plants at home in a huge aquarium.

Plants were looking at their best when all conditions were met, that is they had enough light, enough "sleeping hours", enough CO2, low enough PH, and the chemistry of the water had all the nutrition and at the right concentration. I was measuring the water condition on a daily basis, checking iron level, phosphate, nitrate, etc, etc, etc to make sure the plants are getting everything they need. If iron was missing then you could notice the deficiency in few days. If nitrate was missing then plants were so weak that they looked terrible. The thing is - a plant needs all the nutrients in order to flourish. If only one poor nutrient is missing - then the plants is stagnant, stuck! Actually that one nutrient that is missing is causing the plant not to consume the other nutrients!!

The human body behaves very much the same - if something is missing - it will show eventually, and it can be devastating to your health. So I think it's a good idea to check for deficiency in one's diet. Using the USDA data base - I went over all nutrients and checked for deficiencies.


The importance of Macro Nutrients

Back then when I was growing plants and people in the forum were asking me about plant nutrition, and about some micro element that may be missing like boron... I would say that with all respect the most important nutrients are the N, the P and the K!! NPK! These are the plants macro nutrients: Nitrate, Phosphate and Potash. There's no point in going into the details of some micro nutrient when a bigger, more important macro nutrients is missing or is in excess.

So for human beings we are talking about fat, carbs & protein. These are the macro nutrients and the rule we should have enough fats, carbs and protein.

So before talking about raw food, and dude do you get enough fiber, and the ratio between omega 3 and omega 6 - let's get this thing straighten out - it's the Macro nutrients that count. You should get enough of them.


Calories

The best way to summarize how much fat, how many carbs and how much protein we consume is to look at the calories because it's actually a weighted sum of all the fats, the carbs and protein in your diet.

9 x weight of fat in grams + 4 x weight of carbs in grams + 4 x weight of protein in grams = calories.

So calories is the first thing that we should be looking at - is it enough? Is it?

In order to calculate the calories that one requires we first calculate the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). BMR calculates the number of daily calories you need to sustain life if you were totally immobile - how much energy do you require just to stay alive.

Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years) 

Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

In my case BMR = 66 + 6.23 x (105: 0.453) + 12.7 x 83 - 6.8 x 50 = 66 +  1444 + 1054 - 340 = 2224 calories.

Next we use the Harris-Benedict formula to multiply the BMR by the appropriate physical activity factor.

• Sedentary: BMR x 1.2
• Little active, light exercise, 1-3 times a week: BMR x 1.375
• Moderately active, moderate exercise, 3-5 days per week: BMR x 1.55
• Very active: hard exercise, 6-7 days per week: BMR x 1.725
• Extremely active: very hard and intense sport and training twice a day: BMR x 1.9

I estimate that BMR=1.6 should represent my case so I need 3558 calories (BMR 2224 x 1.6) per day.

Looking at my daily intake I am shocked to find out that I consume less than half of this, I get ~1700 calories. That's very low. Even if I take into account my target weight which should be 71 Kg - still I shall need 2,800 calories.

So yes I lost weight quite rapidly as result but I think that this party should be over. Time for me to ramp up my caloric intake.


Macro Nutrients

What should I increase? fat? carbs? protein?

Chris Carmichael, recommends in his book Food For Fitness that athletes should consume 65% of their caloric intake from carbohydrate, 13% from protein, and 22% from fat.

As you can see my body is striving for more fat and more carbs while protein is almost OK.

Dr. Fuhrman too seems to be all for having more fat in my diet. In his book "the end of diabetes" he writes "Adhering to a diet that is less than 10 percent of calories from fat is not an appropriate recommendation for ideal health . This too-low percentage of fat results in less-than-ideal health outcomes such as low energy and minimized hormone production . The simple truth is that a healthy diet could be 15 percent of calories from fat or even 30 percent of calories from fat. As long as the diet is rich in micro nutrients and does not exceed our daily need for calories , a lower-fat diet has no advantage in the prevention and treatment of disease."


Micro Nutrients

Keeping the above in mind I am going now over all the nutrients and see how much do I have relative to the RDA.

Vitamin D 

As for Vitamin D - as I explained in another post - I get it from the sun. You can follow this link in order to calculate how many minutes you need to expose your face and arms to the sun in order to get your daily RDA.

But on the first rainy day I already bought this -

Vitamin B12

Vitamin B12 I get as a pill that I take daily under the tounge - 1200 ug daily.



Choline

Choline is a problem. The RDA for this nutrient is 550 mg. And as a vegan I am not sure how I can get enough if I don't eat liver or 5 eggs per day...

• Beef liver - pan-fried - 100 grams (about 3.5 oz) - 418 mg
• Whole large egg - 112 mg choline
• Beef (ground) 80% lean/20% fat - 3.5 oz patty - 81 mg
• Cauliflower - 3/4 C cooked (1" pieces) - 62 mg
• Navy beans - 1/2 C cooked - 48 mg
• Tofu - 100 grams (about 3.5 oz) - 28 mg
• Almonds - sliced - 1/2 cup - 26 mg
• Peanut butter - 2 T - 20 mg

So I bought this...

Niacin

I am consuming only 88% of RDA today and I want more. How do I increase that? There's plenty of niacin in fish, chicken, pork, liver & beef but I don't eat these.

There's also lots of niacin in peanuts, sun flower seeds and avocado but it takes many calories to get the RDA here. For example spanish peanuts provide 0.028 mg Nicain per calorie. So in order to get RDA one should consume 571 calories per day from peanuts. That's about 100 grams per day. Currently I consume 50 grams nuts in one day and so if I double that and make sure half of my nuts & seeds comes from niacin then I should be ok.

Vitamin E

The RDA here is 15 mg per day.

There's lots of Vitamin E in sunflower seeds (0.06 mg per calorie), almonds (0.045 mg per calorie), tomatoes (0.03 mg per calorie), and peanut butter (0.015 mg per calore).

All of this is suggesting to raise the amount of nuts & seeds and make sure I get portion of sunflower seeds, almonds and peanut butter.


ZINC

The RDA for Zinc is 11 mg per day.

Food that are rich with Zinc are: oisters (0.2-0.75 mg per calorie), beef (0.06 mg per calorie), alfaalfa seeds sprouted (0.04 mg per calorie), basil (0.03 mg per calorie).

Till now I got most of my zinc from beans (0.008 mg per calorie)...

If I want to increase my Zinc intake by say 4 mg then it means 100 grams of sprouted alfaalfa. It just doesn't make sense.

So I will have to buy this -

Iodine

I don't have any numbers for my Iodine consumption but I would guess that it's close to zero since I don't consume sea salt. So I will have to take this supplement as well.

Salt & Sugar

The maximum amount of salt to be consumed by a human being is 2.3 grams per day. I consumed 0.48 grams so I am "OK". There's lots of evidence that such low consumption of salt is not healthy, I shall read more about it and tune my diet accordingly.

As for sugar the maximum allowed is 284 grams per day while I am consuming 119 grams of which 77 grams are from fruits. I think I am OK here too.


Summary

The nutritarial vegan diet that I was leading for the last couple of months has some severe deficiencies and before it's too late - it's time to make sure I get enough. The most important 'nutrient' is the number of calories. I am going to double the amount of seeds and nuts from 50 grams per day to 100 grams per day.

This increase shall also resolve the issue of vitamin E & Niacin intake.

In addition I shall consume the following supplements daily: Vitamin D or sun light, B12, Choline, Zinc & Iodine.

Aviel.

A new nutritional index reveals that you should wrap your food in bacon

Hi guys,

Long time, sorry about that, been busy working, working, working :)

The other day my 90 yo vegetarian father sent me this article with the a title "A new index for the nutritional quality of various foods indicates that you should eat bacon and oysters". Well my father is the living proof that you can live a healthy long life w/o ever eating meat

So I had to find out what's this thing is all about.

Well turns out that this article quotes a young and a handsome PHD from Harvard by the name of Mathieu Lalonde. He is one of the Guros for the Paleo diet. Apparently there are many people adopting this Paleo diet which advocate us eating like our ancestors - mainly proteins, that is meat, pork, that stuff. And so this guy did some work called "Nutrient Density: Sticking to the essentials". You can watch it here.

Look, I am not qualified to judge and give marks here to these people. Apparently they have some logic behind all the fuss. I shall read about it - I always read about the enemies before I decide to mock them or... join them. I mean right now I am busy reading a book about finding wild nutritious plants growing in our back yards. You can't imagine me reading a book about how to catch cats or even the little cute rabbits growing in our backyard. And here's a picture of them if you don't believe me!!!

That said, those of you that do know me, are well aware that I can kill if I have to. I mean I have killed several times in my past when my survival instinct came into play. If I shall be convinced that this Paleo thing is the best next show in town then I shall toss this vegan/nutritarial thing aside and do the right thing.

But for now, I can't wait till I am fully educated - I am just executing on my diet and the results, so far are amazing.

Now back to this young PHD, the Paleo Guru. Well he sure knows how to present stuff. First of all he's good looking, he wears a blue shirt and a matching yellow tie, he speaks fluently, he knows how to look serious but I am not impressed by this - I mean I used the same techniques in my past to climb the technical ladder and present things when I had no clue of what's going on. It's the way you dress, the way you look and the way you talk. Especially in America...

So to summarize - he sorted the main food groups according to their nutrition density and he got the following results:

So as you can see Organ Meats and Oils are ranked at the top, and then herbs & spices, nuts and seeds, cacao, fish and seafood, pork, beef, eggs & diary and only then Vegetables...

How come????

How come I have been preaching about nutrient density and how vegetables are winning and all of a sudden comes this young man and say such things?

The answer is simple. It's the definition of what nutrient density is.

I am adopting the calorie restriction society as well as Dr. Fuhrman's definition as well as many other scientists : density = N/C = Nutrients / Calories. If you want to lose weight and live longer then you want to pay with as few as possible calories in order to get as many nutrients as possible.

Simple.

Now comes this PHD and explains the following. What is it that we are looking for - we are looking for the amount of essential nutrients divided by volume.

As for the denominator they guy knows he should put there calories but he doesn't feel comfortable with this....

First of all if he puts something with 0 calories in the denominator then he has a math problem. Now come on, so just because you have to deal with water having 0 calories - you are not going to use calories in the denominator?

And here comes his second argument which is absolutely unbelivably biased... and I quote "If you have a food that is very nutrient dense but also caloric dense dense then it’s not going to get a good a score as a food that has the same nutrient density but has fewer calories"

You will have to read this few times in order to understand what this guy is actually saying. He is saying that if you have meat (which is nutrient dense but caloric dense) then it's not going to get a good a score as a vegetables (which is nutrient dense but has fewer calories).

Let me make this sentence even shorter for you - what this guy is saying is that if you have meat then it's not going to get a good a socre as vegetables so that's why he is not going to put calories in the denominator....

Now think of yourself, a harvard student, sitting there listening to this crap and in front of you there's this good looking, so sure and so full of himself PHD saying this stuff with a serious look on his face. You wouldn't have no time and no courage to even understand that this is all wrong.

But before you contemplate what to do - this young PHD puts the following definition to nutrient density while saying "So I decided to use the weight per serving"

He also says "If you have someone who needs to lose weight then - sure stay on moderate to high nutrient density and moderate to low calorie density. (but if) you got an athlete... increase the calorie density of the food that he eats (no matter what the calories are)".

He actually agrees that if you want to lose weight then you should adopt the N/C model. He actually says it! And then he goes on to say that it doesn't work for athletes. So he prefers to feed us Athletes diets while some of us would just like to lose weight! Well people have already thought about it right? I mean using the N/C nutrient density and fullness factor you can aim to any of the quarters in the nutritional map. Remember?

You want to lose weight - go for the upper right corner.

You want to gain weight - go for the lower right corner.

both corners are high in N/C nutrient density.

You want to be a fat slob - for the upper left corner.

You want to die - take the lower left corner.

So easy, so simple. Let us decide what we want to do - don't eliminate those of us wanting to lose weight.

So AFTER saying the above he says... "So I decided to use the weight per serving".

You see? This guy is very scientific and un-biased... - all he needed was to present ONE mistake and then move on with his wrong conclusions. One mistake - put weight instead of calories in the denominator. From that point on everything goes south in his lecture - all his nutrient dense winners are winners because they are high in calories. Yes you are going to get lots of nutrients if you eat bacon, pork and yummy red meat but you are also going to become very fat for goodness sake.

And then when everything is twisted he can compare eggs white who have less calories than egg yolk. I mean people are eating only the whites cause they want to get as many proteins as possible without being fat. Here comes our genius young PHD and at about minute 19:40 jokes about it "sorry but for those of you who eat eggs whites for omlates, I will take the yolk".... Yea he will take the yolk just because he didn't take into account the price that he has to pay - the calories! 

I am sure he knew he was wrong, so that's why instead of discussing the denominator (calories) he preferred to allocate more time to discuss the numerator- the nutrients. He came across the ANDI index created by Joel Fuhrman and he was making fun of it. How could this be an index he laughs, if it doesn't contain performed vitamin A, pantothenic acid (B5), vitamin B12, vitamin D, biotin(Vitamin H), vitamin K1 and K2, taurine and iodine as well as essential fatty acids: EPA, DHA & AA as and essential amino acids. He actually makes a point here - and I really don't know why Fuhrman didn't take these into consideration. I will ask! I will find out! But on the other hand the young PHD himself excluded so many nutrients just because they were not part of the USDA EXCEL but were only in the microsoft ACCESS version. The excuse was now that most people don't have microsoft ACCESS and he wanted people to review his work....

So starting with an ambitious goal of really including all essential nutrients he had to remove from the list. He doesn't have any of the fatty acids, he doesn't have any of the amino acids and no chloride, Chromium, Cobalt, iodide, Molybdenum, Nickel and Sulfur... And to think that 2 minutes before he was mocking Fuhrman. See how many nutrients are striked through in his so called index?

One thing that he took out of the equation are the flevonoids. Hu humm - there are thousands of them and you can find them only in vegetables and fruits.

Under the umbrella of trying to look as if he's an objective scientist he decided to look only on the essential nutrients. Well that's the first mistake. Who are you to say what's essential and what's not. How come you are so sure of yourself that flevonoids are not important?

And of course he then decided that sorry fibers are not essential so it's taken out. Yep, it's taken out because vegetables have them and he would like the Paleo guys to cheer for him.

I wanted to play a bit with his excel like so many others. I mean - just sitting there in a lecture is not enough - you want to digest the numbers - you want perhaps to convert his work into something meaningful. But no... he doesn't give the excel source... yes - we got this Quick Update on Mat Lalonde’s Research on Nutrient Density on which Mat wrote to one of his fans

He then goes over the food groups and tries for some reason to find the best and the worst food in terms of nutrition. This is of course completely twisted and one can clearly see that those foods that are winners in terms of food density cost tons of calories while the losers just don't have enough calories in order to compete. All of this could have been saved if he only divided his results by the calories and then sort again.

That's why apples got the lowest ranking in the fruits department. look at the biggest losers here:

Really?

Let's take 'Apples, raw, with skin' and look at their nutrition map as shown in nutritiondata.self.com

Look like apples are not that bad - they are actually in the upper right quarter which means they are quite nutritious and when you eat them you don't want to eat many more - that is their fullness factor is quite OK. On the right side you can see the caloric ratio - only 3% fats.

The young PHD advocates eating pork. That's right, after reviewing all of his twisted nutrient density calculation he's recommending to wrap everything in bacon. And the crowds cheer.

Let's look at pork nutritional maps - let's take the winner of the pork winners. I mean it's full of fat 68%, tons of calories and if you make your calculation - how much nutrition do I get for how many calories then actually this winner actually stands at 2.5 out of 5 and same more or less in the filling department. Actually this guy is located in the lower left quarter... I am not impressed.

So this Mathieu Lalonde got it all wrong.

Does it mean that all the Paleo diet is wrong? Well certainly if this is the way they organize their arguments then yea they are wrong. But I give them more credit than that, there *is* logic behind thinking about what's best for a man to eat in terms of evolution, survival of the fittest, etc. I am going to read more about this diet and keep you guys posted.

Aviel.

My superior vegan nutrition blood tests results

Hi there,

Just before I started my diet in the beginning of July I took a blood test and now I took more or less the same test again.

I am really thrilled, positively surprised and almost shocked to see such significant improvement in most parameters. 3 Months of super nutrition reversed my diabetes and improved other life threatening parameters significantly.

It should also be a good opportunity for you guys to learn about the main parameters that one should pay attention to when reading the blood test results.

It's not enough to worry only about the parameters that are in red according to the definition of your medical insurance. Total cholesterol, for example, doesn't have to exceed 200 in order to catch your attention - it should be a concern for you the minute it goes beyond 140. So take the time to go over this with me and learn something useful that could extend your life.

Glucose

Starting with the glucose test that in simple words measures the concentration of glucose (sugar) in one's blood. The normal range is between 70 and 100. Between 100 and 126 is called pre-diabetic and beyond 126 is diabetic. In the beginning of July I was shocked to find out that my glucose level sky rocketed to 129!! I immediately started my diet, and with the help of Joel Fuhrman's book "The end of diabetes" I lowered my glucose level and it now measures 97. I am back to normal. Actually when I measure at home I am more like in the 88-95 range.

Am I satisfied? Well partially yes, but I think that this is still too high - I would like to be able to go to sub 80 at some point cause I believe that one lives faster when having such high glucose levels. I want to live slower, cause I want to lengthen my life. I will explain all about that in one of the coming posts.


Hemoglobin A1C

Once a patient gets a glucose level beyond 100 - the doctor typically asks for hemoglobin A1C test. This test shows how good was the glucose level during the last 3 months. You want your Hemoglobin A1C to go below 6. My doctor gambled that I shall have a reading of 6.0 two months ago and I even exceeded that! That's a very very good result. The end of the diabetes as we know it....

Cholesterol

As expected my cholesterol is absolutely optimal now. I was vegetarian since I was 7.5 years old, but I ate junk food so my cholesterol was very high but still not extremely high because at the end of the day I was not consuming meat. However it seems like the other stuff that I was eating including eggs and milk and cheese still managed to take me to 197.

But now - look at this - 117 !! If you remember I quoted the 97 yo vegan - a heart surgeon saying "If you can keep your Cholesterol under 140 - you chances of developing a coronary heart disease are very small"  and he then said that his cholesterol level is 119 atm. Well mine is 117 !! Hada boy!


Triglycerides

These are the fats that are so dangerous for the heart. You don't have to perform a blood test to get the reading... all you have to do is look at the tummy. I had a huge tummy and now it's gone.

GOT

Here too you can see that my diet has done wonders. Let me first explain what this test is. This test is checking the liver. As you know the liver detoxifies the blood in the circulation removing harmful substances, etc. Now there are several enzymes that are helping in this process. When the liver is damaged or destroyed these substances leak into the blood stream and can be measured. The problem with this GOT test is that it can indicate problems not only in liver muscle tissue but also in skeltal or coronary muscle tissues. To complement this test one should take the ALT test.

Anyway my doctor, contrary to the stupid doctors in "seker menahalim" immediately said that this too shall go away the minute I slim down! I like this doctor of mine. Not only is she smart and advanced, she's also even a little bit... humm... sexy.

Hemoglobin

The hemoglobin is an oxygen binding compound that carries oxygen into the cells and trust me your cells do need oxygen, otherwise you should feel fatique. I have always had low hemoglobin level but I was also always busy taking care of my job... I never had the time or the priority to look into this - IT'S ABOUT TIME! Especially since I thought that this nutritarian diet is going to improve things and as far as what I can see my hemoglobin got lower!!


Hematocrit

In conjunction with hemoglobin doctors always look at the Hamatocrit. These two folks typically go hand in hand. The Hematocrit is telling us what is the percentage of red blood cells in our blood. These red blood cells are carying the hemoglobin that carries the oxygen into the cells. My reading is low and it even went south in the last two months. You can look at it like this - the blood are the street of NYC and the red blood cells are the yellow taxi cabs and when their percentage is low then there's not enough taxis to carry hemoglobin so there's less hemoglobin too.

But why? Why do I have low Hemoglobin & low Hamatocrit? And also... - why me????


Iron


Big part of the Hemoglobin above is made of iron - and it's the one responsible for compounding with the oxygen and carrying it into the cells. So if there's no iron - then the hemoglobin is low.

And indeed !!! - my iron levels were always low but now, in the last 3 months they dropped significantly.

How on earth?

I mean I was eating tons of green leaves. But I read that plants based iron is not absorbed so good as the iron in the red meats. And stop with this "I told you" all you non-vegans reading this...

And I was also supplementing with 25 mili grams of iron pills - daily!

So how come this measurement is low?

I noticed over the years then whenever I am on a 'weight loss' diet my iron drops. But this time I thought it shall be different because I am supplementing and I am so healthy.

What is going on????


Ferritin

While serum iron is the level in the blood - the ferritin is the level of iron in the store house - in the liver. So it seems like I had huge improvement - I almost doubled the amount of iron in my storage.

But it's not in the blood... - why?

I don't know - but I suspect that the aspirin that I am taking on a daily basis is causing this. The aspirin is responsible for diluting the blood so yea it could hurt the hematocrit and it could also thus lower the hemoglobin...

So the hypothesis is as follows... - when I was fat and drinking 10 cups of coffee each day and eating lots of cheese my iron absorption was bad and thus the ferritin level went down. Then, when I started dieting 3 months ago - I ate lots of greens and supplemented with iron pills and indeed my ferritin went up however since my blood is diluted with Aspirion - it doesn't show... I will have to ask the doctor about this "theory".


MCV

MCV measures the size of the red blood cells Actually microcytic Anemia is defined in wikipedia as too low MCV. So as you can see things are improving but I am not there yet...

MCH

So if we are suspecting microcytic anemia then in this case the red blood cells should be hypochromic, that is - they should be pale. The MCH actually measures how pale they are. High MCH indicates macrocytic anemia and low MCH indicates microcytic anemia which means anemia that is cause by iron deficiency.

so to conclude the iron related blood tests here is what I think

• Ferritin is the most important indication for amount of iron in storage - and it improved.
• Hemoglobin & Iron as well as Hematocrit, MCV & MCH were probably affected by me taking Aspirion - so this is the end of Aspirin.
• Low iron can be a result of 3 things: low input of iron, bleeding & low absoption rate which could be genetic related.
• I shall do colonscopy just to rule out the bleeding option.
• I shall read and educate myself about iron input using plants - is it true that iron absorption from plants is that low?
• I shall not dive into genetics for now.
• After reading and educating myself about these issues I shall make my decision - increase supplementation or stick to plants as my sole iron source. 

Vitamin B12

Vegans can't get B12 from their diets. It's therefore that I get it from a B12 supplement. Before starting my new diet 3 months ago I measured the Vitamin B12 and it's ok, B12 deficiency are developed over a long period of time - years! so I think I shall monitor this annually to make sure that I have enough of this extremely important vitamin.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D was not measured 3 months ago - I just wonder why - I mean 1/3 of Israelis are Vitamin D deficient and I am sure those that are sitting in the office all day like myself are even more deficient. Anyway I started my daily "sun bathing" 3 months ago - and the results are showing that I am already out of the dangerous zone. I am almost sure that I would be at risk of deficiency or even deficient if measured 3 months ago. I can actually feel it in my bones - if I don't get the 10 minutes exposure to the sun on a daily basis then I can't concentrate, can't work effectively - for me it's a new habit. 

Conclusions

The results are astonishing - I got rid of diabetes, I reduced the cholesterol significantly, along with triglycerides, and resolved the oily liver problem. The only thing that is still a mystery for me is my iron levels and I shall explore that.

Aviel.

Yay - I graduated the "Couch potato to 5K" program

Yes,

For me it is quite an achievement!

If you told me 3 months ago that in 3 months I will be able to run 5 Km w/o stop I would not believe you. I was extremely fat.

My right feet was injured because it could not carry my weight. I couldn't walk so I instinctively shifted my weight to my heels. The result was Heel spur - a sharp pain in both heels (Plantar fasciitis)

 s

I bought pad insoles for my shoes - and the doctor told me I won't be able to run any more but I will be able to walk and start exercising. I was so happy. and I started walking 3 months ago.

I would walk one hour every day in the gym. Because I was afraid to run - I was walking up the slope and trust me - it was very difficult as you can see here.

Then 9 weeks ago I started my nutritarian diet. It was during my summer vacation and I was away from the gym room in the office so I started the program "couch potato to 5k". It started slowly - I would jog 60 seconds and then walk 90 seconds and I would repeat that for about 15 minutes. Then on the next week I would jog 90 seconds and then walk 2 minutes. And this week was the 9'th week. Everyday I ran 30 minutes from the office to the beach and back. Today was the last day of the last week and I ran 5 Km and 185 meters in 30 minutes!!!

It's amazing - absolutely amazing. I am very surprised that there was no injury. I think it has to do with my nutrition. Let me explain. Back then in the dark days, 3 months ago, I had those pains in my feet and also it was a bit bleeding and wet and this and that. I think my feet was on its way for becoming a diabetic foot. If I didn't read Dr.Fuhrman's "The end of diabetes" then I guess few years from now my feet would have looked something like this - 

You see? - it was an ensemble of so many problems, this doesn't work and that doesn't work. And look at me today - I can actually run 5 Km. Where are all the problems? Where are the injuries associated with running? I mean I had a surgery in my knee few years ago, I am susceptible to injury and yes this is my fear - I admit. But yet here I am running 30 minutes every day and no injury. I think it has to do with my blood vessels, it has to do with the fact that my veins are so clean that blood is rushing to my legs, nourishing them, fixing issues, fighting inflammation and any oxidation stress.

So now I purchased for 2$ the program that takes me from 5k to 10k. it's called "10K pro by run double"  

and I am looking forward to be able to run 10 Km. That should be so cool.

Aviel.