Ancestral eating and fasting

[ThankYouVeryMuchGerry]

I'm really interested in starting to eat in an ancestral way (bit less strict than paleo but no grains) as I need to lose weight and feel better as I'm currently suffering from several conditions that are exacerbated by inflammation in my system.

I'm also keen to try fasting, I currently do 16:8 intermittent fasting but I'd like to try just a water fast for 24/48 hours.

Has anyone done either ancestral eating or water fasting? I just want to be healthier and if I can lose weight that would be a bonus.

What do you mean by “inflammation in my system”? I’ve seen this referred to on diet posts before and haven’t managed to figure out what it means.

Healthy to me is eating good a good quality, balance diet, 80% of which is made from scratch. I don’t get why fasting and cutting out grains would be healthier?

Yep I wonder about grains too, I'm a carb fiend but I would've thought ancestors would eat them? Am I being stupid?!

www.eatingwell.com/article/2058068/inflammation-might-be-the-reason-youre-not-losing-weight-here-are-5-things-you-can-do-about-it/

Here is an article about inflammation. Lots of health conditions are caused by excess inflammation as well as insulin resistance.

OP, I have done a 24 hour fast which wasn’t too difficult. Not tried any longer ones. However I would advise doing low carb before you start fasting because the ketosis reduces your hunger.
I think our ancestors probably did eat grains but the grains were quite different in nature to the grains around now.

Our ancestors had a 30-40 years life expectancy, based on fossil excrements, they were eating mainly plants, roots, occasionally if successful some animal, they were scavengers and would eat leftover carcasses. Animal in the wild are extremely skinny compared to animal raised in industrial cattle farming.

Today's population who are closer to that lifestyle such as the Innuits have a 10-12 years life expectancy reduction compared to other Canadian - Alaska population, so I am not sure going "ancestral ' has any health component in it.

Limiting whole grains in favour of animal products will increase inflammation and increase your dementia risk as well.

Instead of thinking about removing "carb", think about removing " crap" out of your diet.
Eat like your grandma did, not like some mythical "Ancestor", eat food that existed when your grandma was a child, in the formal it existed, no ultra processed, ready meals, crisps, plasticky cheese, and so on.

Yes to meat, and fish and eggs, but not three times a day.
Eliminate all processed meat, try to eat fresh food, plenty of vegetables, herbs, "whole" whole grains, real bread and not the spongy toast.

Follow the science not influencers and youtubers.

I’ve been thinking about trying to eat this way too.
I’ve heard it’s great for inflammation and also brain fog, which is my main symptom.

I’m just a bit confused about grains, specifically rice. Is that allowed, or not?

Couldn’t agree more Cormoran

The science shows the opposite in terms of animal products and inflammation. Low carb high fat (Including animals fats) diets have gotten loads of people off diabetes medication for instance and the healthcare sector is slowly moving away from the outdated low fat high carb nonsense that has led to the highest levels of obesity and diabetes in history. Life expectancy was low in ancient times due to absence of healthcare and high infant mortality rates. Not because people keeled over at 30 and died of natural causes. Some people do well on a diet that contains grains but many don’t. I am one of them.

Inuit diets are unlikely to be like paleo or ancestral eating. They eat hardly any vegetables for instance. Paleo is all veg, fruit, nuts, meat and fish. It cuts out all processed food. It’s incredibly healthy if you do it properly.

Join us on the WhyWeEatTooMuch thread, it's basically no sugar, processed food, certain oils or wheat but not as strict as paleo. Moderate to low carbs but not keto low (I do great on low Carb for weight loss but these days it makes me tired and cold, even once I'm adapted, probably due to my hypothyroidism).
The book doesn't advocate fasting, but I do it occasionally and don't see the issue as long as it isn't all the time (your metabolism will adapt). The book is fascinating (but so are many books about diet and weight loss) and has a lot of really good info on evolution and how what we eat has impacted on that, though it isn't a 'diet', he only added the advice in at the end because the publisher insisted!
It's basically sensible, whole foods but no wheat because that's really processed and no oils high in omega 6.

Ok so i’ve done some reading and “inflammation” appears to mean your immune system is more active than expected.

There’s one paper, published in 2004 that showed a link between an inflammatory marker- an immune protein, and weight gain. This whole theory seems to have arisen from that.

It is not clear why this protein is increased when you gain weight. To me, if you’re generally unhealthy and overweight of course your immune system will be more active- stress on your joints, your gut, your body generally.

Does the “inflammation” cause weight gain, or is the inflammation a result of the weight gain?

To me it seems we’re back to the eat healthy, exercise and look after yourself rather than yet another magic bullet where certain foods or food groups make you lose more weight than others.

If someone could explain more it’d be appreciated.

I controlled my gestational diabetes 18 years ago by simply cutting back carbs. (I haven’t ever developed diabetes and my second pregnancy was fine.).

The NHS nutritionist, told me I needed to go low fat. This was her main concern. I was very lucky that a South African doctor at the hospital pulled me aside and told me flat out to pet her no head. He said to cut back severely on sugar and processed carbs.

I was given a machine and told to check my blood sugar four times a day. I could quickly see that things like Naan bread, suggested by the nutritionist were a disaster, while whole nuts, told to moderate by nutritionist were a-okay. Etc. I ate lots of fruit, veg, meat and nuts and I was able to control my blood sugar completely; I never needed medicine. DD was born a healthy weight.

There is a lot of controversy around what our ancestors actually ate. Google and you will find different points of view and different sets of facts. It’s clearly emotive.

I did think some people’s systems really don’t do well on diets high in carbs and seed oils which has basically been the diet pushed since the 1980s. Heart disease is killing fewer people, but obesity and diabetes are up.

I think whatever our personal biochemistry, we all benefit from cutting out highly processed foods.

Pet her head?
Pay her no mind!

I think the inflammation is primarily a result of the weight gain but it also prevents someone from losing weight so it’s a vicious cycle. In any event, eating whole unprocessed foods can never be a bad thing and this is what paleo and other diets primarily advocate. Lowering carbs, for me, reduces hunger considerably. I can’t stick to a calorie controlled diet because it triggers binge eating due to the restriction. So for me, it’s the only way of eating where I feel satisfied and am not fighting a losing battle with my willpower. There is plenty of science in favour of reducing carbs, both in terms of health and in terms of weight loss success. Most grains that we eat are nutritionally pretty empty - pasta for instance. If I replace my pasta with courgette that I eat with a serving of bolognese, it’s hardly going to make me nutritionally deficient just because I no longer eat processed wheat flour. And if I were eating pasta, I would find it very hard to limit myself to a small portion and would then crave biscuits and sweets afterwards.

Some people may be able to stick long term to just eating less and moving more but for the majority of overweight people, it doesn’t work and eating plans like keto and paleo are really useful in terms of reducing cravings. The health benefits for me have also included getting rid of severe PMT and migraines. That alone tells me that this way of eating is far superior (for my body) to the standard British diet.

This is it though isn’t it. One size doesn’t fit all.

Personally I don’t think we know enough about the science to be able to say we should all be doing x, y and z. I have more knowledge than most about biochemistry and much of the lay theories flying about on insulin/inflammation etc simply do not fit in to known biochemical pathways.

The desirable thing is to reach a healthy weight, eat as much unprocessed as possible, exercise and sleep.

Whether you do that via low carb, high fat, calorie control, paleo or anything else is irrelevant. At the baseline they all help you control the amount you eat. There is no magic way of eating that makes the weight fall off.

Low carb does not work for me.