Comment by espeed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by espeed | Hacker News Reader

Norman Borlaug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug) invented a "superwheat" ~50 years ago and won the Nobel Peace Prize for it. It was a high-yield dwarf wheat that had short, stronger stalks so it could support a larger head, which enabled it to grow in famine stricken areas.

Now 99% of the world's wheat is the a descendant of this semi-dwarf strain. However, the chemicals used to process wheat today are potent, and the wheat we consume today is not like the wheat people consumed 100 years ago.

Last year I cut out wheat from my diet and dropped ~80 lbs -- I'm back down to 180. At first I thought it was exercise/sprints, and while I have no doubt this helped, I haven't been exercising much the last few months and I'm still dropping. Maybe it's the gluten in the wheat or maybe it's something else, but it definitely wasn't working for me.

While I haven't read it, evidently Dr. William Davis' book "Wheat Belly" explains this in detail (http://www.amazon.com/Wheat-Belly-Lose-Weight-Health/dp/1609...).

Yes, "Wheat Belly" does an excellent job of explaining exactly what modern wheat is and how it's different from the wheat of 10,000, 100 or even 50 years ago.

As for "Superwheat", well, note that 'super' refers to productivity, not to nutrition. Farmers will like the 30% yield increase, however you may not enjoy having "Superwheat" eviscerate your GI tract.

I would hazard a guess that you inadvertently kicked yourself into ketosis. If you've been limiting your total carb intake to under 50g a day, it's possible this happened. There's a ton of good info on ketosis, a couple of great podcasts by Steve Gibson on it, and a good subreddit http://reddit.com/r/keto.

A simpler explanation is that his new diet contains less calories than the old one. Achieving ketosis by accident is pretty far fetched, even among ignorant people on some crazy food group diet.

No, I wasn't in ketosis -- my carbs were well over what it would take to go into ketosis.

I was thinking part of it may have been the wheat/yeast throwing my intestinal microbes out of balance (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/health/studies-focus-on-gu...) and so when I cut it out, things returned to homeostasis.

Have you been tracking calorie intake, both before and after the diet change? That's the deciding factor for your weight. Metabolism, wheat/yeast sensitivity or even normal exercise only has a minor impact.

I would think dropping something as common as wheat would have significant impact on your diet, or?

This isn't entirely true. If you take in the same amount of calories but something changes your metabolism, you can switch from using all the calories and entering a deficit, or storing the calories as fat. This is partly what happens with ketosis. You can eat the same amount of calories overall, but with almost no carbohydrates, and this changes your metabolism. You will lose weight in keto without excercising more if you are so inclined. Like many things, it's a good rule of thumb to say that less calories == less weight, but it's a nuanced situation. That's not always true.

I'm not saying that metabolism has no effect, I'm saying the effect is small relative to calorie intake. I'm well aware of how a keto diet works, and that it can be useful for people looking to lose weight. It's no guarantee, though. There are actually people out there bulking on keto as well.

As for the parent poster, I haven't seen any evidence of calorie tracking. To me that means he doesn't really know how much he's eating, and I think you're just encouraging his flawed metabolism theory when you should know better.

That's really interesting. I've read about intestinal fauna having big impacts on how food is processed.

Also probably less phytates and antinutrients from wheat. /r/Paleo is your friend too.

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