That is a fascinating article, thanks for the link!

Good article! I've always felt that so many reports on the health benefits of nuts, olive oil, low-fat milk, etc, are based on improvements seen primarily when people replace SAD (Standard American Diet, or JUNK)foods with these items. It was great to see this validated in the scientific literature. Thanks for this!

How's it going?

I've been 3 weeks off all high fat foods: no oil, no nuts, no avocado, no Durien, no chocolate... all of which I had been eating increasingly in recent years. I've lost about a pound. I was hoping for more weight loss by now, but I'm feeling lighter & more energetic, & it's going in the right direction. Slow weight loss is to be expected when already within one's healthy BMI range.

Another important advantage of eating only the low-fat plant foods is protection of the colon. Dr. McDougall explains how high fat foods trigger the release of bile acids, which increase our risk of developing colon cancer.

I found some details on that on Dr. Mirkin's web sites: "Eating a high-fat diet causes your liver to make more bile, and bile is loaded with a chemical called lithocholic acid, a bile acid that helps digest fat. Lithocholic acid is probably the most toxic compound that your body makes. Lithocholic acid damages the DNA, the genetic material in cells to cause cancer."

http://www.drmirkin.com/morehealth/G210.htm

It's been just over 2 months now of eating 100% low-fat, whole plant foods (eliminated ALL oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, chocolate, Durien. I've lost 11 pounds while eating all I want. There are other improvements too: I always used to enjoy cooking and trying new recipes, which went by the wayside once I got into "treating" myself with high fat foods. I have started opening my recipe books again! Yay!

I added up the calories from fat that I had been eating before the change; it was amazing how fast it added up! According to my calculator (9 calories per gram of fat) I was eating about 500 calories JUST from fat. I had been "justing" myself into gaining weight: JUST a 1/4 of an avocado on my salad,JUST one piece of Durien, JUST 1 ounce of chocolate, JUST 1/4 cup of unsalted cashews... as if saying "just" somehow magically takes away the high fat content.