* Fat soluble vitamins and their role in endocrine function
The biggest pet peeve I have with low fat diets is the fact that they don’t take into account the need to properly assimilate fat soluble vitamins. If you don’t think this is important, think again. Fat soluble vitamins include A, D, E and K. I hear people say all the time; well I got shredded eating low-fat. I don’t dispute that you can get ripped eating low fat. I’ve done it to the point that I couldn’t get a reading with a skin fold caliper. I know it can be done. The issue is long-term health.
These vitamins are so important to your endocrine systems. Performance enhancing type drugs can cover these deficiencies up short term – but when these athletes don’t have the muscle building, protein sparing effects of these drugs, and their endocrine systems have received no support from their diet…look out. In addition, there are many studies that show low fat and low cholesterol diets long term create more depression, suicidal tendencies, etc. These are well documented in Lancet journals.
Here are some of the things that these vitamins do:
Vitamin A
This vitamin is extremely important, so much that your liver can store it for a while. It helps with protein and mineral metabolism. It helps to ensure proper thyroid function, and it helps in the production of s*x hormones. Those things are all critically important (or should be) to athletes.
Also it gets depleted from strenuous exercise which a few of us engage in. Grass-fed butter, and egg yolks are my favorite day to day source, with an occasional half-pound of Beef Liver to augment levels. Don’t fall for the vegetarian belief that you can get plenty of Vitamin A in carrots and other veggies. The Vitamin A in those foods are really not Vitamin A, it is a carotene, often referred to as Provitamin A.
True vitamin A, or retinol, is found in foods like cod liver oil, butterfat from cows grazing on pasture, liver and fish – especially shellfish. Your body has to convert the carotenes to retinol, and it only does that well in the presence of fat. Fat stimulates bile salts, which help with the conversion. So you better add some butter to your veggies if you even want a prayer of getting enough Vitamin A on a vegan diet. Actually, grass fed butter is the most easily absorbed food source for Vitamin A, hence why I put it in diets…well, one of many reasons.
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So, you are taking the ideas behind the Paleo diet, renaming it and claiming this was your hard work that discovered this? This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read.
And ‘mountain dog diet”? Dumb. I am glad more people are catching on to the positive effects from eating Paleo, but someone hijacking the diet as their own is just absurd.
If you go to the end of the article you will see that we credit John Meadows for this diet. Also you are probably not reading well since you say it’s paleo diet. John never said he stopped eating salt, grain, legumes, and dairy like the paleo believers do. The only thing he cut is the refined foods and simple sugars.
Glad someone said it because it was exactly the same thing I was thinking. As each point came up I was like wow this sounds like Paleo but there must be something setting it apart… The only thing is the name