Nuts and Seeds

Here is my understanding of what our cadre of mostly plant-based, whole foods diet doctors (Barnard, Campbell, Esselstyn, Fuhrman, McDougall, and Ornish) recommend (note, Campbell is a Ph.D., not an M.D., for what it's worth).

• They all consider oils to be harmful.  I've heard two reasons quoted for this:  1), they are empty calories, at about 120 calories per tablespoon.  2), perhaps more significantly, most are very high in omega-6 fatty acids (more on this below).
• Whole foods fat sources are good for you, in limited quantities.  These include nuts and seeds, avocado and relatively unprocessed soy products (soy milk, tofu, edamame, tempeh).  (NOT isolated soy products used to make tofu hotdogs and sausages and protein supplements).

As far as I know, the only differences in their recommendations are

• Fuhrman has a lower limit to the amount of nuts and seeds that should be consumed by everyone, which is 1 oz.  I think the other doctors do not. 
• Fuhrman recommends an omega-3 supplement (DHA), and none of the others do as far as I know.  In fact, some are adamant in their opposition to this.

These differences may be minor, but this became an important question for me lately as I considered transitioning to a lower-fat diet.  Some people have very low calorie needs (e.g., older women) and 1 oz of nuts and seeds, along with modest quantities of avocado and soy products, can easily put the fat percentage above 25%.  

I highly recommend Jeff Novick's DVDs on nuts and oils.  (I also recommend his DVDs on calorie density and lightening up).  This is the best summary that I know of on the topic.  Here I learned about the important of the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in your diet.  The standard American diet has a very high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids.  We all need a very small amount of omega-3 fats.  Most of us ingest a sufficient amount if we eat a whole foods, mostly plant-based diet with lots of vegetables.  However, we only have so many enzymes available to digest these fatty acids.  If our intake is dominated by omega-6 fatty acids, the enzymes will get used up digesting those.  I hadn't appreciated that fine point until I watched Novick's DVDs.  It might explain something I've been curious about.  I've noticed that some people on the Standard American Diet, who are obviously ingesting large amounts of fat, sometimes appear to have dry, scaly skin and brittle hair.  I suspect they have an omega-3 deficiency--or are unable to digest what they ingest of omega-3, because of the omega-6 imbalance.  I'm just speculating.  Anyway, back to Novick.  He says, as long as we avoid the oils, and excessive consumption of healthy fats, which also mostly have high ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 fats, then we will ingest a sufficient amount of both in proper ratios.  McDougall says the body gets very good at converting the ALAs in foods to omega-3s when it needs them.   The foods with high ALAs, or alpha-linolenic Acids, are flaxseeds and walnuts (hemp too I think).   Novick says if you really want the assurance you are getting enough omega-3s, eat a tablespoon of flaxseed per day.  

Campbell is adamantly opposed to omega-3 supplements.  This surprised me.  I heard him speak about this at the food revolution summit.  He cited studies that show the supplements did not behave as we thought they would.  Here is a quote from the transcript:

"I have in mind particularly a review which was done of a total of 59 different kinds of studies of omega three fats that was published in 2006. This is 6 years ago. It came to the conclusion they simply don't work for reducing heart disease, cancer and diabetes." 

Another study showed that it can increase the incidence of type II diabetes.  what?   He also argues that it's the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 that matters.

I'm still digesting some other articles sent to me by Kristi (thanks!).  

I decided to follow Novick's advice for now.  I'm not setting a lower limit to my nuts and seed intake (eek!).  I am not taking DHA (Dr. Fuhrman's omega-3 supplement) anymore (eek!), I'm eating 1 T of flaxseed most days.  This is a big change for me as I have been following the Fuhrman advice for about 5 years.  eek!

I have to say, due to the lower fat content in my diet, the extra pounds I've gained the last few years are melting off effortlessly.   Now I have to see where my weight levels off.  I think I don't want to lose more than 1 lb from where I am now.

some tips I learned this week

I'm skimming/reading/listening to a few different books and learned some useful things from them.  Note that I've only just started some of them so there may be more discussion in future posts.

From Mark Hyman's books (Blood sugar solution and Ultrametabolism), you can get very good discussions about how bad sugar and refined grains are for you.  I think I mentioned this already in a previous post.  Another thing I learned this week is that high-quality fats contribute to weight loss by regulating insulin, as well as contributing to satiation.  I guess that's where that phrase "you have to eat fat to burn fat" comes from.  They also increase your metabolism which helps burn fat.  However, his definition of healthy fats is different from mine.  I'm pretty convinced that oils of any kind are not heart healthy and I want my heart to be as healthy as possible as I am prone to several heart ailments without a high-quality diet.   In my view, stick with nuts, seeds, and avocados for your healthy fats.  Also, in a departure from Dr. Fuhrman's recommendations, I actually like his idea to not get too hungry between meals but allowing a snack or two.  This week, my eating schedule was breakfast at 8 am, lunch at noon, snack at 3-4 pm (berries), and dinner at 8 pm.  It was liberating to tell the truth.  I didn't felt compelled to overeat to get to my next meal.

I started reading Brendan Frazier's Thrive.  I like how his first chapter is about stress.  Stress contributes to carb burning more than fat burning because of the well-known fight-or-flight syndrome that results from stress.  So limiting stress is good for weight loss.   He argues that the biggest stresses on most people is an unhealthy diet.  I don't know if that's correct but it's an interesting conjecture.  He is an athlete so seeks optimal physical performance.  The faster you can recover from exercise, the more you can train, and the better your performance.  A healthy diet leads to faster recovery times.  This is very motivating for me because I love to exercise and the more the better.  It's ironic that I love exercising because I have so little natural talent in sports!   I am slow slow slow.  But wait a minute, even though I was slow on the mountain bike trail today, I made it up a steep rocky/rooted hill that had the two guys in front of me walking and the guy behind me walking.  Ha! Of course, they passed me once we got to the top (with nary a nod to my awesome performance).  On a cautionary note, Frazier's recipes are appropriate for ironman athletes burning 10,000 calories per day.  I tried one out today with about 1/10 th recommended seeds and it was still very high-calorie.  However, it was useful because I went 7 hours between breakfast and lunch, with a 2.5 hour mountain bike ride in between.  

I'm listening to Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz--I'm not too far along but I already learned something useful.  Motivational books don't work too well with me because I have a low self-image and can't convince myself that I can succeed if I believe I won't.  The tool (or maybe just one tool) in this book is visualization and imagination.  Now that I can do.  I fantasize all the time that I'm a fast swimmer and awesome mountain biker knowing well and good that I'm the slowest one on the course.  That's what's great about fantasy, it's all pretend.  So I can definitely see the value of fantasizing about my success with healthy eating.  The idea is to pick a goal and imagine in great detail what it would be like if you were there right now.  Like for example, say you want to lose 4 lbs in the next 2 weeks.  Imagine 2 weeks from now how you will feel and what you are doing.

yuck!

This post ("High Fat Foods Can Lead to Brain Scarring") from diseaseproof makes me glad to be in my nutritarian prison.  It's probably the only prison where you can say the food is good.  :)

I suspect that was a controversial post, but I'm not done with the idea just yet.  There's something about the limitations worth exploring.