[tyweir]

Looks pretty good.

Two points that I'd not follow.

Diet: Eating grains. Gluten is pretty much evil for everyone, including non-Celiacs. Google for "paleo diet" or "gluten autoimmune" to get a sense of gluten's impact. Also check out the "Save my Life" HN thread for more info about gluten-free/paleo. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1399450

Exercise: Cardio, long slow distance is pretty much useless. High intensity intervals, 200m, 400m repeats will have a much bigger impact. If you really love endurance, check out http://crossfitendurance.com/ and google for "tabata intervals"

[hugh3]

Those two points seem to me like fringe advice. I'm sure if I googled "gluten autoimmune" and "tabata intervals" I'd find a bunch of people agreeing with you, but no more than I'd find with any number of other fad diets or exercise regimes.

It'd take a helluva lot of evidence to persuade me that eating grains is bad, because... heck, grains are tasty, and the vast majority of humans who have lived over the last five thousand years have had grain-based diets with no obvious ill effects. Likewise, if you think long slow-distance cardio is pretty much useless, go watch long-distance runners for a while.

My advice to anyone who is unfit and wants to be fit is to ignore everybody who's trying to sell you some very specific idea of what you have to do, and just concentrate on doing the lowest-common-denominator stuff: eat less junk, do more exercise.

[warpwoof]

People have different tolerances to the amount of grains they can eat, but, if you want optimal health, you'd stop eating grains. Grains are not a nutritional necessity. There's nothing in grains that you can't get in meat, vegetables, fruit, or seeds/nuts.

This article is a pretty good treatment of specific problems with grains: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-grains/

Again, some people can be in good shape and eat grains. But if you want to be as healthy as possible they need to be avoided. Or if you're overweight/out of shape, removing them from your diet will definitely speed up the process of improving your health.

I know for my own body, it's best for me to avoid them completely. They have a very addictive quality for me, more so than anything sweet. Forget the ice cream, give me a roll!

[hugh3]

Again, some people can be in good shape and eat grains. But if you want to be as healthy as possible they need to be avoided.

Find me a professional athlete on a grain-free diet.

Maybe they're out there somewhere, but I'm pretty sure if you find me one I'll find you a better professional athlete who eats grains.

With so much effort put into finding optimal diets for athletes nowadays, if cutting out grains would improve fitness in any meaningful way then we'd know about it by now. If Lance Armstrong or Usain Bolt could go faster with a grain-free diet they'd be doing it.

edit: I found a link about Usain Bolt's diet. Turns out he eats quite a lot of rice:

http://dailyrunningtips.com/training/usain-bolt-diet-food/

Now I can't prove he wouldn't be even faster if he cut out the rice, but I am pretty sure it can't be doing him too much harm.

[warpwoof]

I see where you're coming from, but I think we have a different definition of "health." Athletes are not necessarily the definition of "healthy" to me. They have usually specialized in one aspect of performance. In fact a lot of what they put their bodies through can be detrimental in the long run.

For the normal person who works out a few times a week and then sits at a desk 40 hours, I think removing grains would be very helpful.

A professional marathoner is a different story. Grains might make sense because of their carb density.

[Evgeny]

Find me a professional athlete on a grain-free diet.

Maybe they're out there somewhere, but I'm pretty sure if you find me one I'll find you a better professional athlete who eats grains.

Find me a (former) professional athlete who lived in perfect health till their 90s.

Maybe they're out there somewhere, but I'm pretty sure if you find me one I'll find you multiple (former) professional athletes who died from CVD, cancer etc.

if cutting out grains would improve fitness in any meaningful way then we'd know about it by now. If Lance Armstrong or

Um, the guy who got cancer when he was 25 years old? Phenomenal athlete, but hardly a good example of a perfectly healthy person.

[lpolovets]

The research on Tabata intervals is actually pretty interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_trainin...

If you Google for "tabata research", you'll find a number of studies -- including the original paper by Dr Tabata [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897392] -- showing that bursts of very high intensity exercise can have a greater effect on endurance than long, steady workouts.

On the one hand, I find it counterintuitive (how can sprinting on-and-off for 5 minutes help my endurance more than running for an hour??). On the other hand, it kind of makes sense, since your body improves most when you really challenge it, and sprints are generally more challenging than a steady pace.

[tassl]

For your last sentence, I think that you have never trained track and field. While 30-40 minutes of jogging is usually done by athletes, the core training is done by series of shorter distances that you have to compete with.

As an example, I have been training for 400m the last years. Being a short distance (although when you reach 300m you feel that is way too long) it is basically trained by repetitions of shorter distances (150/300). And by basically I mean that sometimes there will be longer distances (specially off-season) and tempo.

In general, people that train for 5000, 10000m don't run 1h to train their endurance. They will do, for example, 25x400m r:30", or shorter distances like 3000, 2000 or 1000.

There is no secret on that, you are using your body to run a higher pace that is used to, while running 1h will make your body be used to this slower pace and thus you will not improve your endurance.

If you ask me, I would say that endurance training is not worth it, and that training high intensity is better for your body.

[hugh3]

Yeah, I agree it's plausible that they might do a bunch of good. I was mostly disagreeing with the grandparent's assertion that long-distance training is "pretty much useless".

Maybe I'll try incorporating some sprinting into my workouts.

[tyweir]

I understand your viewpoint and opinion, as I've run into it before.

I'm going to disagree that gluten has had "no obvious ill effects" because I've seen the changes in my clients lives, experienced it my self (gluten-intolerant) and my mother (Celiac). And your argument that eating grains is not bad because they taste good is preposterous.

As for LSD, can you tell what appeals to you about the physique of a marathoner?

Changing peoples eating and exercise habits is like getting people to quit smoking, they need to have the impetus to start, outside advice/encouragement only goes so far.

"eat less junk, do more exercise." I guess we differ on what "junk" is.

[hugh3]

I've seen the changes in my clients lives

Ah, so you're someone who makes a living by selling diet plans? I'm afraid that if you're a professional x salesman that makes me somewhat less likely to trust your testimony on the advantages of x.

experienced it my self (gluten-intolerant) and my mother (Celiac)

Well obviously if you're gluten-intolerant then gluten is bad for you.

And your argument that eating grains is not bad because they taste good is preposterous

I'm not saying they're not bad because they taste good (cf cheesecake), I'm saying that it would take a lot of evidence to get me to stop eating 'em because they taste good. Basic price/benefit calculation: I'm not gonna give up bread and rice without a damn convincing reason.

As for LSD, can you tell what appeals to you about the physique of a marathoner?

Y'see now you're sounding like a salesman.

Changing peoples eating and exercise habits is like getting people to quit smoking, they need to have the impetus to start, outside advice/encouragement only goes so far.

True. I think crazy diet advice can really do a lot of harm, though, by making people think that getting fit is a lot harder than it actually is. Cutting out ice cream and cookies is easy, cutting out grains is very hard.

[tyweir]

I run a CrossFit gym in Toronto. I get no money/compensation for anything regarding nutrition. We get people to try paleo for a month, book-ended by body composition tests and benchmark workouts. If life gets better and they stick with it, great, if they want to quit, they quit.

"Y'see now you're sounding like a salesman."

You didn't answer the question, you just accused me of something that's not true.

I think the best thing to do is end this conversation. We disagree on all the points up for discussion, and I'm guessing that nothing I type will convince you, and I'm certain that nothing you type will convince me.

[billswift]

>I'm certain that nothing you type will convince me.

Well, at least you realize you are irrational.

[Evgeny]

cutting out grains is very hard.

Certainly not. You just stop eating them. I stopped about half a year ago and never looked back. Well, my health was reasonably good so I can't say it improved dramatically since. However, I had some digestion issues before, these have been eliminated. This alone is enough for me to justify dropping grains, as digestion issues may become annoying and embarrassing at times. :)

[chipsy]

The problem with "just stop" is that it interferes with a conventional lifestyle where you can tolerate other people's choices of food(which, the vast majority of the time, will contain grains or dairy).

I lean towards the paleo style myself, but I tolerate a little bit of compromise, and a little bit more when I'm with a friend. But I know intuitively how bad it is now - the effects I feel 15-30 minutes after consumption are mild but predictable.

[Evgeny]

It'd take a helluva lot of evidence to persuade me that eating grains is bad, because... heck, grains are tasty, and the vast majority of humans who have lived over the last five thousand years have had grain-based diets with no obvious ill effects.

Well, sugar, ice cream, cola - they are all tasty too.

Anyway, if you're interested in looking into ill effects of grain-based diets, there's a couple of links with some evidence.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology...

http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/m...

[scottshapiro]

well said!