Irresponsible Advice from Dr. Eades

Again, leaving aside the creepiness of this man's words, I've got to address how irresponsible his advice in a recent blog post was.  I may come back at some point and address the "Listen to your body?" stuff, but MM reminded me in the comments on another post of some more disturbing content in the post.

His advice boils down to "up the fat" to hasten the transition into ketosis so that your "induction flu" is as short as possible.  Now, I've never experienced any such symptoms so I can't really relate to this, but apparently newbies and restarters have done very well taking the advice in The New Atkins to increase salt intake by sipping a little bullion.  Anyway, Eades -- oddly enough author of a book subtitled "The High-Protein/Low-Carbohydrate ..." --  has now jumped full on into a tub of Mangalista lard.




Specifically:


Eat more fat


If you want to reduce the time you spend in low-carb adaptation, crank up the fat. If you go on a high-protein, moderate-fat diet (Schwatka’s reindeer diet), your body will convert the protein to glucose via gluconeogenesis, so you’ll still have glucose to keep the glucose worker enzymes busy and will prolong the conversion to fat and ketones as your primary energy source.
I'm pretty sure Eades has previously said repeatedly that we only make as much glucose as our bodies need, but what's a little inconsistency right? 
So Rule Number One to reduce the time spent in low-carb adaptation purgatory is: Don’t be a wuss when you start your low-carb way of eating. Keep the carbs cut to the minimum and load up on the fat. Eat fatty cuts of meat, cooked in butter or lard if you want, and force your body over to using the fats and ketones for energy as nature intended. I mean, don’t try to be noble by eating boneless, skinless chicken breasts – instead insert some pats of butter under the skin of a chicken leg and thigh before cooking, and wolf them with your fingers while the fat drips down your arms.
Umm ... Leaving aside that if the fat drips down your arms, it's not getting eaten ... This is just the most irresponsible advice one can give to a person engaging in a weight loss attempt.  Why?  Because if a person is to be successful in losing weight and keeping it off, they will have to leave this sort of eating mentality behind.  Forever.  I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Jimmy Moore after he binged on chicken wings.  This notion of upping the fat by adding fat to that which naturally occurs in foods is without a doubt the most horribly misguided strategy for weight loss or health or whatever.  In response to my attempt to point out that chicken - boneless/skinless chix breast aside - is not a woefully "underfat" food, Jimmy discussed ways he ups the fat even more.  If you're eating chicken legs with the skin on and still think there's a reason to add MORE fat to this, that's insane.  Eades continues:
Do not trim the fat from your steaks – eat them from the fat side in. If you leave anything on your plate, make sure it’s the meat and not the fat.
Oh oh ... Paleo-oh (sung to the old Sergio Valente jeans commercial tune)
If you don’t already, learn to love bacon, and don’t cook it ‘til the fat is all gone: eat it wobbly. Wallow in Mangalitsa lardo.
 Please, one should never tell an overweight or obese person to "wallow" in anything.  This guy's an MD?
And whatever you do, for God’s sake, don’t listen to your body during this adaptation period or you’ll never cross the chasm between fat and miserable on your high-carb diet and slim, happy, energetic and low-carb adapted on the other side.
This from a man who eats only like 1700-1800 cals/day, yet still needed to "cure" his fat gut, and who wrote these two posts on calories:  LC & Calories I, LC & Calories II.

He should be ashamed of himself.  

Comments

Diana said…
Hi CS,

Well, over at "The Chronicles" I've already told you with characteristic delicacy and tact what I think of Eade$. I hate hate hate him. Oh, there I go again....

Somewhat off topic but I've been storing up a lot of stuff that I want to get off my chest, so here goes.

It strikes me that the whole diet world is a crazed offshoot of the foodie world, which in itself is a world of nutcases. Eat this, don't eat that. Cook this, don't cook that. We evolved t eat this kind of fruit, not that kind of nut.

AAARRRGGGBHHH!!!!! Isn't the world crazy enough? Now to these we add food insanity. The latest I read is that carbs are a female conspiracy to castrate men, to remove them from their ancestral paleo hunter birthright.

Just when you think it can't get crazier, it gets crazier.

People's heads are so damn spun around, they lose sight of the basic basics:

If you eat more calories than you expend, you will gain weight (fat).

As someone who used to deny this essential truth, I can't hold it against laypeople who are desperate to lose weight any way they can, who believe this.

But for people with scientific training, promoting this is shameful.

Did I tell you how much I hate Michael Eades?
REGUnited said…
Hi Carbsane, love your blog. Isn't that Anthony Colpo challenge still on the table for Eade$.
MM said…
I think it may have been from Eades that I read you can't burn fat and sugar at the same time. So, if you want to burn fat you have to eat fat, and if you eat sugar (starch) then you'll stop burning fat in order to burn the sugar. I think this very on/off fat/sugar burning is a lot of the reason this kind of stuff is recommended, and not just by Eades. However, if it really doesn't work that way, shouldn't an MD know that?
Margaret said…
Hear, hear. I still like Michael Pollan's advice the best - "eat food, not too much, mostly plants". Heard him lecture recently in Portland and he warns against "nutritionism" as we become more and more obsessed with what we are eating and try too hard to put this or that in our diet, all the while eating too much to make sure we get all the stuff we "need". He makes a lot of sense and looks pretty healthy too.

Oh - and HIS name doesn't end in an S!
Wait, doesn't he have it backwards? Shouldn't a person with a revved up, super capable metabolism be able to stay lean eating variable and even more calories, and the one with a broken metabolism will gain when eating even lowered calories? I mean, he's a MAN and he's healthy, so 1700 calories, what? Isn't he low metabolism if that's his "stay stable" level?

I'm confused...

But I agree that no person with binge or chronic overeating issues should be wallowing...in anything. We already have compulsion issues...
Sanjeev said…
>> oddly enough author of a book subtitled
>> "The High-Protein/Low-Carbohydrate ..."

In interviews he's said that his preference would have been to mention high fat in the title, subtitle and promotion

but the publisher did not want high fat mentioned so they downplayed that, and certainly in the titles and promotions (so he claims) the publisher and promoters minimize the high fat angle
Sanjeev said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Muata said…
Princess said, "But I agree that no person with binge or chronic overeating issues should be wallowing...in anything. We already have compulsion issues..."

Exactly! How can you, as a MD, in good conscious tell a person, who obviously has a problem over-consuming food, that they should -- 1. Ignore calories since they don't count and eat as much as you want of the "allowed" foods and 2. Make sure that the majority of your diet is fat?
Sanjeev said…
Diana wrote...
... Eade$. I hate hate hate him....
________
Don't be shy and hold back so much ... tell us how you really feel ; )

Hatred doesn't last long, by the way. You've seen evidence that disproves Eades and gotten angry that he cannot see it.

Pretty soon the anger/hate will drain away and you'll just feel sad for them and their followers for not being appropriately skeptical and thus maintaining a false worldview.

But they will accuse you of eternal hate to justify holding on to their non-science, non-skeptical, non-evidential dogma.
Anonymous said…
What Princess Dieter said - if a guy is maintaining/developing a belly on 1700 calories a day, I question how good his diet is for his metabolism.

(PD just saw your blog - you are doing great! I'm very impressed with your blog, your progress, all of it. Cute swimsuit, too!)
CarbSane said…
Yeah, sounds like an anti-metabolic advantage to me! Elsewhere Mark Sisson made a comment that he "maintains his physique" on like 600 fewer cals/day than he used to eat eating his way. It goes so counter to so many of the claims of eating 3000 cal/day and losing weight.
CarbSane said…
@Muata: In 6WC he outright makes the claim - stated in a factual manner - that we just futile cycle away excess fat consumption. This is supremely misleading. What's funny is that many of those who tried that diet gained weight during weeks 3-4 - the meat weeks where we were encoursged to up the fat and calories. One such person being Jimmy himself. It was such a mystery!!
Diana said…
Hatred doesn't last long - Oh, just try me!

I just looked at the Eade$ post again. I was tempted to add a comment there but realized that doing so was truly an example of the Einstein adage...the one about the definition of insanity.

Not worth it. I'd rather vent among rational people. We can disagree, but about facts and not matters of faith.
Diana said…
Just one more observation about this "listen/don't listen to your body" business.

I happen to think that there IS a mind-body split - or rather, a split between neocortical and older brain processes. I believe that the stuff in the older brain areas is hardwired and the neocortical process are (to a degree) learned and therefore somewhat plastic.

Obviously, it's way more complicated than that. (Regarding smoking, I could go on and on but I'll spare you.)

But anyway....When people say, "listen to your body" what they mean is: heed those instinctual signals. Lots of times this is: "get out of here, it's dangerous."

When you are going on Very Low Carb induction and you get sick, what's going on? Maybe it's your amygdala telling you to eat something satisfying (carbs?)? Perhaps.

I think that one of the reasons why Eade$ hates "listen to your body" so much is because, as a petty fascist, he is easily threatened. And what could be more of a threat than something powerful, which will override his flimsy authority over your free will? He NEEDS for you to suspend judgement and listen to HIS body, or rather, the crap that comes out of his piehole. When you do that, you can't protect yourself. You are a victim.

Sure, we harbor irrational prejudices and primitive fears. And we wouldn't have done much as a species without our neocortical brain functions. Each has a place in our functioning. But when a guy like Eade$, who is so wrong about so much, tells you not to listen to your body, get suspicious.

An honest guy would say, "Try everything. Listen to your body. Listen to your mind. If what you are doing ain't working, try my methods." But he's a low, dishonest hack, so he doesn't say that.

(An example of an honest guy is a fitness teacher named Tom Kurz, whose mantra is, "You can get your results with your methods, or my results with methods. His regimen is too tough for me, so I've stuck with my results. Fair enough, I'd say.)

The hell with Eade$ and his nutty anti-life ideology.
Mirrorball said…
Eades would like this study:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110606092532.htm

"After the weight maintenance phase, subjects who consumed the moderately carb-restricted diet had 11 percent less deep abdominal fat than those who ate the standard diet.
[...]
During the weight loss phase, subjects on both diets lost weight. However, the moderately carb-restricted diet promoted a 4 percent greater loss of total body fat, Gower said."

AFAIK a paper hasn't been published yet, so it's impossible to know the details at the moment.
Mirrorball said…
But Eades is definitely not going to like this one:
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.2847.html

High-fat feeding promotes obesity via insulin receptor/PI3K-dependent inhibition of SF-1 VMH neurons
CarbSane said…
@EG Welcome & thanks! Yeah I believe that offer's still out there. Waiting for that Metabasol study to be published first LOL!
Bluezy said…
I will be poking around here for a while. I started LC coming from a restricted but semi LC month. I am gonna poke around here. Looks like you have a great deal of resources.

I thought LC was a no brainer, but I have some issues that I need to brain out. I expected surprising weight loss...and maybe I am just being urgent. I was hoping to brag about 40-50 lb loss very soon.
CarbSane said…
Welcome Susan! Although I lost rapidly with VLC, many -- women especially -- simply do not. I think LC can still be useful for these women to take advantage of the appetite advantage to control calories. Yeah, that dirty word. If you're not losing, the culprit is too many calories and that is most easily addressed by choosing leaner proteins and using a light hand with any added fats when cooking or dressing a salad and such.

Good luck!
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