What a man! He’s come out (at last) in favour of fats and proteins and against heavy carbohydrate use. Now, in case you missed the thrust of what I’ve been saying since I started writing for MyPE, I agree wholeheartedly…
Having attended a talk of his a few weeks before I wrote this article, I was delighted by the science he presented, to underscore his opinion. Ironically – ‘though used for decades throughout the world as a ‘healthy’ food guideline – the food pyramid has its foundation in politics, not science. This isn’t hard to fathom since the world’s population has been getting fatter and more diseased by the year … clearly the food pyramid is not the way to go.
This brings me back to another point I have made repeatedly, which is this. Everyone is unique, in terms of their biochemistry. This means that we all have different needs in terms of dietary amounts of fats, proteins and carbohydrates.
Remember, remember..
Generally speaking however, there are some common principles:
- Grains are problematic, especially when processed (such as commercial breads, pastries, muffins, pasta, cereals etc.) but even when whole (such as brown rice, millet, barley, stone-ground breads, spelt etc.). This is due to the effect they have on blood sugar.
- Processed sugars (like table sugar, syrup, heat-extracted honey, fructose etc.) create havoc in the body, by suppressing the immune system and leading to high levels of inflammation and, once again, in raising blood sugar.
- Fruits contain high levels of sugar and so can be a problem for certain people. These people are what Noakes would call ‘carb-resistant’ – in the metabolic typing field, we call them ‘protein’ types. For these people, fruit should be consumed in much smaller quantities than have previously been recommended.
Blood sugar
Controlling blood sugar is the answer to controlling health and weight. Very simply put, the above-mentioned carbohydrates break down very quickly into sugar in the body and when the level of sugar in the blood rises, the pancreas responds by releasing insulin. Without going into the technical details, the end result of regular, high insulin output is high body fat storage (and diseases such as overweight, type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease, high cholesterol and high blood pressure).
Your unique biochemistry
It’s your genes that determine what you should be eating. They adapted over many thousands of years to the specific region and climate you lived in. What would your ancestors have eaten? Would it have been more animal/fat-based foods because carbohydrates weren’t grown during the long winter months? Maybe it was the reverse because in warmer climates there would have been more variety and choice of carbohydrates, together with some meats and fats. In order to achieve your own ideal weight and state of health, you’re going to have to understand what your ideal ratios are.
Experiment!
This is the answer to solving your own weight/energy/health issues. In future meals and snacks, try (slowly at first) to add greater amounts of good quality fats, including cold-pressed seed (flax, hemp), nut (almond, macadamia) and vegetable (sunflower, olive) oils, plus saturated fats like butter and coconut fat and even the fat in meat (from naturally-reared animals). Also, increase healthy proteins like grass-fed animal meats and offal, naturally-raised and un-medicated chickens, naturally-raised fish from clean waters, raw nuts, seeds and whole milk products. In addition, reduce the above-mentioned carbs in the diet (instead, increase your vegetable and salad intake)
You should notice a big difference in energy, satisfaction (after meals) and the ability to last longer between meals. Oh – and if weight loss is your goal, you’ll notice body fat disappear too!
Recommended Tim Noakes books: Challenging Beliefs – Memoirs of a Career | Waterlogged – The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports | Lore of Running – 4th Edition
Timothy Noakes on Twitter:
Otto Warburg Nobel Prize 1931: "The cause of cancer is replacement of respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar"
— Tim Noakes (@ProfTimNoakes) April 7, 2013
Tanya Wyatt
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