The Human Natural Diet and the Evolution of the Zero Carb Diet. (Part 5)
(Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3), (Part 4), (Part 6)
By Dana
After getting kicked out of LLVLC we all moved over to the shiny new forum, created by Charles Washington called Zeroing in on Health – ZIOH.
At first ZIOH was an open public forum. How soon we learned THAT was a mistake. We were constantly getting attacked by people who thought we were crazy. (See, The Bears thread, to read what kind of arguments we had to (still do) deal with on a daily basis.) So, we came up with a questionnaire that people had to fill out, letting us know a little bit about themselves and why they wanted to join. This helped with some of the problems but not all.
The best part and the most valuable part of ZIOH was our personal journals. It was in these journals that we talked about our progress, experiments and general ZC life experiences. Due to trolls exploiting us in other groups, we ended up having to make the journals private. Only members who had some number of posts, I think it was 100, could then see our personal journals and create one of their own. This encouraged new members to read and learn a little bit about the Zero Carb Diet as well as giving us time to get to know the new members before we opened the door to our private journals.
Some of these journals were wildly popular. Margot’s, Kelly’s, Charles, Caitlin and Christiana’s, I think, were the top 5. It’s a shame these journals were lost because the information is so valuable to the newbie’s who think they “have a better way”. We tried it all! More fat, less fat, less protein, less calories, fasting, exercise, coffee, no coffee, dairy, no dairy, supplements, more water, carb cycling, calorie cycling…. We ALL experimented with every experiment in existence, if any of those experiments were successful in accomplishing anything positive, we would all be at our perfect weight, telling everybody how we did it. Between me and a few dozen other zero carb dieters, we have about 10 years of experimenting with a Zero Carb Diet, trust me, not one of the experiments worked and in fact, the experiments just slow progress / healing or lead to failure and eventually caving in to fierce carbohydrate cravings. I can’t tell you how many members we lost due to experiments, only to return weeks, months or years later to tell us what a mistake that was. Our mantra will always be the same, “Just eat meat and drink water, as much as you want, whenever you want”.
The most popular documented experiment was to prove fat and excess calories won’t make you fat. This was Jeff’s MAM experiment. (I can’t remember what MAM stood for) Since people feared fat and calories so much, he set out to prove that fat and excess calories, in the absence of carbohydrates, doesn’t make us fat. It’s the carbohydrates that make us fat. Gary Taubes explains the science behind this fact, in his book, Why We Get Fat. Jeff spent 30 days trying to get 5000 calories in per day. It was impossible for him to eat that many calories of fat, cream and meat. He mostly ate closer to 4000 calories. I know I can could easily eat 5000 calories of pizza in a day and be hungry later for more. This just goes to show all calories are not the same. It is impossible for me to eat 5000 calories of steak. At the end of the 30 day experiment, Jeff didn’t gain any weight, in fact he lost some, proving calories in does not = calories out. (Continued), (Part 6)
To learn more about the Zero Carb Diet form folks who have been eating this way for years, join us in our Zero Carb Health Facebook Group.