The Low Carb Cruise II -- Will BELCHOW replace TWICHOO?
This post sponsored by: ScreenHunterNot really, that's just the name of the screenshot proggy I used to capture this comment I tried to leave on Jimmy's blog:
I'm not surprised that the lineup of speakers on the LC Cruise in May has changed dramatically since first announced. It happened before in 2010 as I discussed in my last post. I think this is rather poor form announcing this on his blog as just a "finalized speaker schedule". This information is being circulated in rather low key fashion. While I'm sure Jimmy is disappointed and worried many will cancel, I think he owes it to those he sold on the cruise with those names to let them know ASAP so they can make an informed decision if they still want to attend. I also wonder how long he's known as well, as he confirmed several replacements prior to making the announcement. Put in the context of "here's our amazing list", the change in two positions doesn't seem like much, but clearly Robb Wolf and Gary Taubes are a huge duo.
Honestly I'm surprised more are not registering their disappointment in this. There's surely a hard core group of cruising friends for whom this is the social event of the year. I sure can't blame them for that, but eh? If it was me and I wanted to cruise with a bunch of friends, I would ... go on a really great cruise with a couple of friends! I'm not a huge cruiser, but I've been on three and my close family has been on several more. There's nothing about Carnival or that itinerary that floats my boat, and looking at the rates ... nothing special there either. I've paid comparable or less for 10 day cruises on better lines. And, umm ... even if I was up for informational cruising, this I just don't get. Rather than sitting in a hot tub or soaking up VitD producing rays on the deck I can't see myself wanting to spend time in a dark room on what looks like folding chairs listening to any of those speeches no matter how entertaining I hear a few of those speakers are. I guess my point being, getting together with old LC friends aside, there's got to be a "celeb" factor involved in going on a cruise like this, and I'm amazed more haven't complained (or maybe they don't know yet?) that Gary and Robb won't be there.
OK, pre-ramble aside, reader FashionTribesDiet wondered what the loss of Wolf and Taubes meant for the future of TWICHOO and such. Sadly FTD, although even the toothpick of TWICHOO has been badly worn, the fact that so many MD's and PhD's put their reputations on the line signing Taubes recentpublicity stunt petition (more than 400 total at this point although that number includes imposters, dupes and the letterless) shows just much headway he actually has made. If nothing else, there probably will always be LC Cruises for Gary Taubes, and Jimmy will be glad to have him back even if he left him high and dry for this dance. If there is a prestigious obesity conference that invited Gary to address, unfortunately some people of greater import than Jimmy Moore are still listening to his fairy tales.
I won't hold my breath waiting for the blog post on GaryTaubes.com complete with lecture slides and video of his Belgian presentation along with his apology to all his fans for dissing them in favor of a better gig. But I think that's the least he could do under the circumstances, plus it would make Jimmy look a bit better too. Heck, surprise me Gary! Show those fans who are at least partly responsible for your being invited to speak because of their steadfast support that you care and appreciate them.
OK, pre-ramble aside, reader FashionTribesDiet wondered what the loss of Wolf and Taubes meant for the future of TWICHOO and such. Sadly FTD, although even the toothpick of TWICHOO has been badly worn, the fact that so many MD's and PhD's put their reputations on the line signing Taubes recent
I won't hold my breath waiting for the blog post on GaryTaubes.com complete with lecture slides and video of his Belgian presentation along with his apology to all his fans for dissing them in favor of a better gig. But I think that's the least he could do under the circumstances, plus it would make Jimmy look a bit better too. Heck, surprise me Gary! Show those fans who are at least partly responsible for your being invited to speak because of their steadfast support that you care and appreciate them.
So anyway, I'm just having a little fun here in the Acronym Shop at the Asylum. BELCHOW = Befuddled Evidence Leptin Carbohydrate Hypothesis Of Whatever -- since TWICHOO sounds a bit like a sneeze, this was the best I could come up with that sounded like a noisy bodily function ;-)
You see, the way Jimmy tells it, Robb was the first to drop, and his replacement was Wheat Belly. But the Taubes back-out came later and must have sent Jimmy grasping to find a replacement of equal star power. Honestly, regardless of my opinion of the man, I don't think you can find someone with even near that star power in LLVLC land. So the backup plan quickly became two replacements. The two? The males of the Leptin Triplets, Dr. Ron Rosedale and Dr. Jack Kruse (or L.Ron and Leptin Man as I like to call them). I imagine Taubes might have spoken on sugar, but probably he'd go back to his classic Adiposity 101 lecture he's given so many times. This is being replaced by lectures bookending the three days of presentations. Jack will speak on "Factor X" -- which, if you listen to his Encore Week podcast, is whatever the audience wants him to speak on, but it's sure to invoke his Leptin Rx/Reset and leptin sensitivity. On the back end L.Ron will entertain with “Leptin, Insulin, Food And The Disease Of Aging” or what I'm sure we could rename "How Carbs Kill" -- oh wait, that's someone else's schtick, it's more how carbs cause leptin spikes cause leptin resistance and somehow via insulin and insulin resistance the whole shebang conflates to age you prematurely and keep you from the longevity I promise to my following at the Church of Scikrispology ... oh and you're all diabetic sinners! Repent!
Although L.Ron does like to work insulin liberally into the mix, and he may even be more anti-carb than Taubes, if that's possible, he's really all about leptin in the end. And who can even figure out what Leptin Man is for because he's all over the map. Although throughout his interview with Jimmy he kept using that "we" word and identifying himself with the low carb/paleo community, he eats carbs (and apparently a lot of protein) at certain times of the year and seemed outright insulted when he misinterpreted me as saying he was a low carber. One wonders if that time in May is too soon for him to eat carbs aboard. In any case, if these two stay even remotely true to their roots, the audience aboard will get a good dose of BELCHOW (the W = whatever because obesity is not L.Ron's focus, they share an interest in longevity, both have a little Woodstock wannabe streak in them, Jack's all over the map, etc.) . If the audience is actually listening and learning, they'll begin to wonder why leptin is a word that very rarely passes through the lips of Taubes as he insists he is the only man on the planet that can save us from the havoc insulin has wrought! They might just begin to wonder why leptin is so often ignored in LLVLClue-land. Wheat Belly speaks more of addiction, battery acid, visceral fat and moobs than basic TWICHOO. L.Ron and Leptin Man will talk leptin. Can Andreas Eenfeldt save the day for TWICHOO??
I just have to laugh. Fred's presentation on the cruise will be entitled: “Exercise: The Truth And Nothing But The Truth, So Help Me Fred” No comment....
Oh ... and someone on FB is super excited to meet Veronica Atkins. Huh? THAT I just don't get.
Comments
If you listen to Robb's podcasts there is no way that he is low carb.....
As to Wheat Belly, Davis' blog degenerated into Mercola land over the year leading up to the release. While I have no doubt many people can benefit from eliminating wheat from their diets -- some with true gluten intolerances, and others because wheat tends to be the basis of bread, pastries, fried food breadings -- he fails to lay out any sort of evidence that (1) wheat is fattening per se, and especially (2) even if it is that wheat leads specifically to visceral fat accumulation. If you use the search on the side bar on Wheat Belly you'll see I blogged on him quite a bit. What's up with the chin fat and baggy doctor coat on the pic from his Encore Week post anyway???
@Fashiontribes ROFLOL BS/blather
@FTD: If this is a lesser known conference inviting him for that reason, it's more of a middle finger to Jimmy & Cruisers. I'm not aware that such conferences with established prestige engage in this sort of thing!
Calories don't count and you'll get fat exercising (akt Taubes)…oh and most recently JM's problems are solved he's applying a testosterone cream…to do what? Living la vida morning wood? Taubes,Eades,Moore,Sisson, et al., circle jerk?
Sigh ... I've probably said too much about this by now. Sometimes I just can't wrap my head around certain things, and this is one of them.
If the failure of low-fat and low-calorie diets is that they are not satisfying enough, then the logical conclusion is that the best diet is the one that provides the necessary nutrition while preventing overeating. LCers often apply this logic to non-LC approaches, but when LC doesn't prevent overeating, it's a sign of a damaged metabolism? Errr... okay.
***
As for the LC cruise, I can understand why people would want to join one even aside from having one or two high-profile speakers show up. Yeah, I expect that the opportunity to chew the fat (metaphorically or otherwise) with a Taubes would be a highlight for the attendees. But in the internet and social-media age, people form large and tight-knit communities where few (or even none) of the participants regularly meet face-to-face. So the cruise can be an opportunity to meet each other in the flesh and spend some time doing the old fashioned get-together type stuff, the stuff we did before we were reduced to 256-color icons and underlined screen names.
So I can see why a person would still want to go on the LC cruise, even if the event doesn't seem so, uh... palatable on its face. I'm more intrigued by what this might mean for the future of the LC cruises and for Taubes and his 'relationship' (as it were) with the LC community. I think that the infrastructure is there for supporting him long past the time when it becomes clear that he's gotten over them (if that is indeed the case). Plenty of smaller lights have (IMO) hitched their credibility to his wagon, and have much to lose if he leaves LC fandom at the altar. It could be amusing to watch.
Or maybe my imagination is getting the better of me. *goes back to sculpting a scale model of a fluffy LDL particle*
"I think the fact he ditched the LC crowd as led by JM reminded me of that book "A Confederacy of Dunces" where the main character tries to organize a revolution of the downtrodden with slogan painted on soggy bedsheets and lots (& lots) of BS/blather."
I will now forever picture JM as Ignatius Reilly!
Someone should send him a Stormy Kromer (lately resurrected as ironic hipster fashion) and he can wear it with the earflaps down.
@Evelyn
As far as the cruise, I was offered a spot as a speaker a few years ago. Even then I did not care to affiliate as a low carb writer, so I declined. Like you, I was horrified at the level of obesity among both cruisers and speakers in videos on Jimmy's site.
It is doubtful if large honoraria are offered for this, and having read and sympathized with the linked essay by David Foster Wallace, it does not seem farfetched to have folks with valuable time and real careers opt to do something other than go on a cruise - any cruise.
http://www.harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf
a bad choice - since our Jimmy Moore eschews exercise, he doesn't pant.
If a sad 90s joke will do for a name, then Jimmy Pants ... NOT.
All this talk of cruises reminded me of a Gary North[0] article where he claimed some older folks were living on these ships full time, getting off one, staying in a hotel for a day to or a few and boarding another because they were cheaper than retirement homes.
[0] I won't link to it; one can never tell what his agenda is, and IMHO he always has one.
One last thing - all this attacking WW over at LLVLC totally perplexes me. So Jimmy and others are bashing a WOE that, arguably, as many or more have successfully lost weight with as LC? Of course there are massive issues with the whole low fat paradigm - but there seem to be even bigger ones with the eat-as-much-fat-as-I-want-and-not-get-fat worldview. JM is but one particularly glaring example (I don't buy all this "deranged metabolism" stuff for a second. Funny how that term came into wide usage around the time the menus blog disappeared). Anyway, it's disconcerting to see so many people saying they couldn't deal with WW because of "hunger". I think that's the problem with Americans and diet: they want their cake AND their tray of paleo lemon bars. In 2004-2005 I lost well over 100 lbs. counting calories (to reasonable levels). Oh, and I exercised. Haven't heard that word in LLVLC-land in a while.
http://health.yahoo.net/articles/nutrition/health-benefits-red-wine-exaggerated
http://judson2history.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/ignatius-j-reilly-fine-line-between-genius-and-insanity/
@Kurt, one of these days perhaps I'll share my thoughts on cruises in general. They perhaps color my opinions here, but then all the more reason for the theme part of going on such.
@Christopher: The screenshot is of the comment I tried to leave. It never got posted & I didn't expect it too. Yeah, the WW bashing and the like is getting quite bizarre. Someone was hungry on WW so that didn't work, but they're never hungry on LC (but don't look now it's not working either).
@BigWhiskey -- I guess Ted Hutchinson doesn't have a reason to drink his bottle of red wine per day any more.
@Karen: JM has his own worldview ;) Must come with ALL that muscle he's added this past year.
@Tonus: I see the community get-together idea here, but that's where I'd rather do something else. It sounds great at first blush. Then I look at the boat and the itinerary and I start adding up the $$ and I'm thinking of other ways I'd like to spend the time and money.
"Someone should send him a Stormy Kromer (lately resurrected as ironic hipster fashion) and he can wear it with the earflaps down." LOL. Agree!
@ christopher
"Cruisegate" - that cracked me right up! :)
"Anyway, it's disconcerting to see so many people saying they couldn't deal with WW because of "hunger"." One thing that stunned me when I read the JM/Ignatius anti-WW post was the number of commenters either complaining that writing down what you eat was just "too much work" (is brushing your teeth daily too much work? what about getting dressed for work?) or that WW is "low in calories". Well duh. And their weird fixation on WW being "low fat" - it actually is whatever you want it to be. You can choose to spend your daily points on a meal of roast chicken with a baked potato & veggies braised in homemade bone broth (like I often do) or nuke one of those awful processed WW frozen-dinners the brand sells or even fix up a heaping of the LC'ers beloved extra-fatty meat fried in additional coconut oil & further embellished with pats of butter if you so desire. *sigh* Ignatius is peddling a whole lotta hooey about something he knows nothing about when it comes to WW.
@ Evelyn
I know you don't really buy the notion of food addiction, but I wonder if there's a middle ground with "trigger" foods (SG's "high reward" foods I guess). For me there are certain food items that I just can't have around and have expressly forbidden the hubs to ever bring into the house under threat of bad-bad things (for him). So I wonder if the JM crowd is just too obsessed with their trigger foods to ever contemplate having to give them up? In part, I guess, it was the vitriol & nasty tone of the JM crowd that had me scratching my head. It's a mystery to me, especially when WW is a viable solution for many people.
Do you think it's that they're just too lazy to actually write down their food, measure their portions and commit to some kind of regular exercise or, like you've pointed out, they just wanna believe in weight loss fairytales? Yes Virginia, there is a magic Weight Loss Potion (or testosterone cream) out there and it's located in LC Country, Land of the BELCHOW.
Re: Trigger foods, I used to eat at least a half bag of caramels a day. I would get anxious is there were no caramels in the house. I kept them hidden. With potatoes in my diet, I can be around sweets, no problem - caramels are safe. I don't even struggle. Not sure if I was misinterpreting a "give me starch" signal or what.
Love that DFW essay. I would go on a cruise if I were going to Europe anyway and had time to take a boat instead of flying.
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