If you believe, as most people seem to today, that carbs are the chief culprit, it’s absolutely shocking to look with fresh eyes at the food pyramid. Introduced less than 20 years ago, the explicit recommendation was for 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta vs 3-5 servings of vegetables! No surprise that the FDA replaced it in June with MyPlate, a much saner guide though still probably off for someone trying to lose weight. In the meantime the obesity problem has achieved epidemic proportions.

A lot of smart people got caught on the wrong path with two overly-simplistic models: Cals in v. cals out, and If you eat fat, you get fat. And, implicitly, if not explicitly, they cultivated the view that obesity is a symptom not a cause. Of what? Why of gluttony, sloth, and a lack of willpower, of course.  The reality is that some people have a tendency to get fat and some don’t. Most of us who are over 40 know that our current selves are in the former, and that our former selves didn’t have to think about diet. Why is it so hard to believe that a fat guy has an inherent problem, not a lack of willpower. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet in the book. If you tend to fat, you can’t eat carbs; if not, you can.

The implications are pretty well aligned with the diet I’ve suggested for losing weight. But there are a couple of differences. First of all Taubes would take issue with my suggestion that counting calories can accelerate weight loss. I’m not sure I buy it, but he poo-poos that whole notion. And, while he suggests that exercise is great for a bunch of other reasons, diet it the dramatically dominant factor in weight loss. One of the key dynamics he cites is the relationship between exercise and eating. Most people eat more when they exercise more which offsets the weight loss benefit. Finally, he’d have you eat more meat than I was suggesting; no reason to limit at all. I suppose I could test all this by putting 40 pounds back on and giving it another go…nah!

It all starts with the regulation of blood sugar (glucose).  Glucose is transported by the bloodstream as a source of fuel for our cells, however too much sugar in the blood is a problem, so the body regulates it by pancreatic insulin secretion. The quickest way to get sugar out of the blood is to shuttle if off for storage as fat in fat cells, and insulin in the blood triggers just this process.

As carbohydrates are digested, they turn into glucose. In reaction, insulin in the blood directs glucose into fat cells (and away from muscle cells). In the process, fatty acids in the blood, say from eating bacon, will be also be turned into fat. So, the carbs indirectly cause temporary building up fat from the carbs and other fat sources. If everything is working properly, glucose levels come down, insulin follows, and everything is hunky dory. Over time built up fat gets burned off into energy for the rest of the bod.

The foods we think of as “carbs” (and sugar) are hyper-easily digested, turning very rapidly into glucose and thus cause the body’s red lights to start flashing and insulin secretion to spike. This control system evolved over millions of years of pre-agrarian history in the days before French fries and even rice or bread. So it was not designed to handle the spikes caused by these foods. Human diets evolved much more rapidly in the last 10,000 years than bodies have. As a consequence, the sugar control system operates imperfectly in the face of conventional modern diets. Insulin levels stay high longer than they are needed, keeping energy from going where it’s needed causing another familar control system takes over…we get hungry, the thing that causes us to eat. It’s no surprise that eating one potato chip causes us to crave another.

Carbs are not just potatoes and bread; you’ll find them in all kinds of foods including very healthy vegetables like spinach (known sometimes as “good carbs”). So if you eat a whole lot of spinach you could ingest a lot of carbs. However the carbs in spinach are bound up in fiber, which is very slow to digest, thus glucose is released more slowly into the bloodstream.  Spinach contains almost as much fiber as carbs; a potato has 10X carbs over fiber. So eat a potato and some bacon, and all the glucose and carbs get stored as fat; put a bunch of bacon on your spinach salad and the fat in the bacon is burned as fuel.

Fructose, the sugar in fruit and dominant processed food sweetener, strains the system in a particularly complex way. Fructose is only processed in the liver and when there’s insulin in the blood, it causes fat build up in the liver. Through a not very well understood mechanism, over time this causes a condition called insulin resistance. Cells throughout the body become less sensitive to insulin, thus requiring more of it to be secreted and for longer. More insulin in the blood means more fat buildup. Wrap the fructose in a bunch of fiber to slow it down, as in fresh fruit, and it’s not so bad. Liberate it in juice, or worse, refine it as syrup, and it’s pretty bad. (“Poison” according to Dr. Robert Lustig in this 90 minute, worth-watching, video.)

I’m not sure I’ve got it all right, but there is little argument about the fact that carbs turn to glucose, glucose triggers insulin, and insulin facilitates fat build up.

Years ago my mom would diligently look up various foods in a little paperback pamphlet. Today, if you are at all technologically bent, software makes it a lot easier. Google “counting calories” and you’ll find scores of options. Most are free web apps where you get an account, enter your stuff and it tracks it for you. They all are pretty similar; the key is to find one with a good database. Piecing together what’s in a salad from McDonald’s is tedious, but if you need only enter “McSalad- Southwest,” that’s easy. Some of the sites have social media aspects, so you can “friend” with other dieters and build a support group. For me a key feature was having an iPhone app available, so I could carry my tracking software in my pocket. I did a little research at the time (6 months ago) and came up with MyFitnessPal. It worked well for me and is certainly worth a look.

As the exercise of the equation is important too, you’ll want to track that did along with your consumption. The tallying exercise can also inspire physical exercise—an extra mile run might, for example, give you the cushion you need to drink a beer that night. Most of the calorie counter apps enable you to enter activity and time or distance and they take it from there. However, if you are a runner, walker or biker, you might want to try one of the smartphone apps that uses GPS to track your route, speed and even change in elevation to calculate energy consumption more accurately. MapMyRun is the most popular; I use RunKeeper. Both are integrated with websites that let you share and search for routes, post to Facebook, and other social stuff, and thus have value beyond the calorie count.

After a while, and in particular once my weight was down in the reasonable range, the tracking became somewhat pointless and not worth the hassle. However, there is another big and ongoing benefit: The practice of counting sensitizes one to which foods are calorically better or worse. It was surprising (and disappointing to a 16+ oz a day drinker) to find that skim milk has more calories than beer. A medium sized sweet potato on the other hand starts to look pretty grand at only 60 calories. Another dieting benefit is that it expanded my tastes to a number of veggies of which I’ve not been a big fan.

With the Barefoot Wonder Diet, you can lose weight without counting, and, in any case, don’t need to count forever, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor for a few weeks if you are aiming to drop some pounds. You might also want before/after pics and measurements, so you can track those dimensions of your progress as well. Anything that gives you get a sense of forward progress will help to keep you on track.

Although we didn’t get a great workout, it was fun and interesting to see how local TV sausage gets made. Dave and his photographer started by interviewing Barefoot Mama, Therese Withee, the first woman to run a barefoot Boston marathon. Next up was Todd Byers, a buddy of Ken Bob Saxton’s, and the world record holder for barefoot marathons with 102 under his belt. Both are great folks,

by the way. Dave also interviewed organizer Preston.

The ensemble then jogged around Cambridge for the camera, up the sidewalk, over the river, etc. They were open to our suggestions about places and angles. After all that was in the can, the film crew headed over to meet with Dr. Dan Lieberman at his Harvard lab.

Dave described that this would be part of a multi-night series. He mentioned that one part would about a group of veterans who run for therapy and another about a long time Boston Marathon race director, Dave McGillivray. But it seems the series was condensed into a single Chronicle episode and the description on the station’s website mentions none of the above, so not sure how much airtime we’ll actually get.

It will be shown on Thursday, July 28, at 7:30 on Boston Channel 5. We gather that after it airs, it will be available on-line here. In any case, good work, Preston, pulling it all together.

Breakfast- The easiest breakfast for me, because I tend to eat at work, is a packet of instant plain Oatmeal. It’s a little dull, but when you are diet hungry, even dull foods taste wonderful. Oatmeal, although a little carb heavy, is also good for cholesterol. More in line with most of the low carb diets is 2 or 3 ozs of meat and a bunch of vegetables, leftover from the night before.  So, I was mixing it up between the two. Vegetable omelets are great too; I usually just don’t take the time.

Lunch- Salad (about 8oz) including 2oz of chicken or hardboiled eggs with oil, vinegar and black pepper. This was really easy for me and continues to be my daily lunch. I’ve come to love the plain o/v dressing. We have a cafeteria at work with a salad bar, so after I exercise at lunch, I swoop in there and toss together a salad. It is completely satisfying. They come in a plastic container with a top allowing one to spread the dressing evenly by shaking and thus using less dressing.

Dinner- Basically, what I’d call a normal American dinner with a smallish meat serving and an extra vegetable instead of a starch.  4 oz meat or fish or occasionally three scrambled eggs and lots of vegetables: Three kinds, or two and salad. Often one of the vegetables was a stir fry of leafy vegetables like spinach, swiss chard or beet greens with onions and or mushrooms cooked in olive oil. Even in the winter we cooked a lot on the grill, often grilling squash, asparagas and other vegetables. Mashed cauliflower and sweet potatoes are great potato substitutes. One glass of red wine or a low cal beer. I found it a lot easier with my wife eating the same.

One book said “don’t drink calories” and there are lots of good reasons to drink water, so I was drinking it with every meal and forcing in total at least 8 tall glasses per day.  Oh, and snacks…I have a hard time not going right for food when I get home from work. Nuts, almonds in particular, are pretty good junk food substitutes. I eat a lot of almonds. Another very good snack is hummus on carrots, celery or cucs.

In the Four Hour Body, Timothy Ferriss advocates giving yourself a day off per week, and I pretty much subscribe to that. One reason is that it makes the whole effort more sustainable when you can reward yourself with the occasional off day. His main point, though, is that it keeps your body from downshifting a metabolic gear into starvation mode and thus actually helps to keep your burn rate up for the other six days a week. A day of gluttony can notch you up two or three lbs, but they come off quickly and you ratchet down every week.

When losing weight, I was also religiously getting aerobic exercise every day. I’m a lunchtime runner and typically do 3-5 miles. At my peak weight loss time though, I was wrestling with a pulled calf, so was instead walking that distance every day (listening to audio books made the time more productive). I also started mixing in some strength training.

The bad news good news is that having lost all the weight, I can’t go back to my old ways and not creep back up. But, the good news is that I don’t mind eating like this. In fact, I am convinced I overall feel better as a consequence. I never get that post-Thanksgiving dinner stuffed feeling, no matter how much I eat. Nor do I find myself crashing in the afternoon. Also, while I maintain the theme, I don’t need to be near as strict and usually go way off the reservation every weekend. Maybe this is how I will eat forever.

The common theme is that to burn vs. store fat, you want to keep your blood sugar levels low and flat.  You get there by losing the carbs, eating lots of vegetables, and drinking lots of water. A helpful rule of thumb is to avoid white—Rice, potatoes, milk, sugar, bread, etc. (The notable exception is cauliflower, a great potato substitute.)

My reading started with The Four Hour Body. It’s not a diet book per se, rather an empirical study of many aspects of how bodies work and how to control them. The author Timothy Ferriss is all about getting the maximum impact for minimum effort. So along with studying eating, he explores how to run faster, jump higher, etc. with minimal training. Throughout he uses his and friends’ bodies as labs for his theories. A large portion of the work focuses on the relationship between diet, body weight and fat. Ferriss is a data fiend and sounds like a kid in a candy store when he describes getting a blood sugar monitoring device implanted in his abdomen; he finally gets to see the immediate effect of whatever he consumes. It’s a bit of a tome, but is structured for jumping around and picking and choosing relevant chapters.

My buddy Rick Reno sent me a copy of Primal Blueprint, by Mark Sisson. It’s a little more of a diet book, but goes beyond to a broader treatment of lifestyle. The basic premise is that cavemen had it right and that we should emulate their diets. He also prescribes an exercise regimen on the same theory: Walk lots, sprint occasionally (as if from a saber-tooth tiger), and lift heavy things. He’s down on running in general, so obviously not 100% aligned with my thinking, but I have taken the sprinting/lifting message to heart. A similar premise is the basis for the Paleo diet, about which I’ve heard but read little.

I understand that a lot of these ideas have sprung from the Page diet developed by a dentist called Melvin Page. This little 4 page pdf is a compact prescription for a healthy diet. It’s great little reference and, in particular, drills down into which veggies contain more or less carbs.

I synthesized all of this into a diet that has worked for me, which I will describe in an upcoming blog.

Sadly, casual running alone is no longer sufficient to keep my weight in check. I have difficulty not consuming large volumes of food, perhaps in part due to being active, and my metabolism ain’t burning the cals it did when I was a younger man. Most guys I know observe that the ol’ bod  significantly downshifts at 40. No doubt getting exercise is a net positive, but nonetheless, last December 31, I found myself weighing 228. For context, I’m 6’2″ and over 50 (uggh) and that weight was 30 lbs over my soccer/rugby, in-shape weight, 25 lbs over my unstated goal, and 15 lbs more than I thought I weighed.

Sorry if this sounds like a lead in to an ad for a home gym. The punchline is that I lost the weight, feel good, and my knees have improved a lot (albeit not 100%). I’ll share the non-secrets of my success over the next few blogs. I have done a lot of Googling and read a couple books that I’ll recommend, all of which leads me to my own “recipe” for a healthy, sustainable diet. But, lest I keep you in suspense, the answer is pretty simple: Lots of vegetables, no carbs (except for beer, the elixir of life).

This morning I weighed 189.6. I know this because I popped for a Taylor 7506 digital scale. If I can make one recommendation it is to step out of the shower and onto the scale on a daily basis. I literally hadn’t weighted myself in over a year as of last December and I had no idea. Knowing the magnitude of the issue prompted me into action and the daily reminder helps one to stay vigilant.

Metro Boston Barefoot Crew (me on left)

Why?

For me it’s mostly about the fun, but also the ease on the knees and hips. Running feels better when you are barefoot.

Don’t your feet hurt?

Running on smooth concrete feels great. Great! Hitting a small pebble wrong can provide a quick ouch, but it only lasts for a few steps. A surface of one-inch chunks of gravel surface is doable. I’ve seen Barefoot Ken Bob glide across a really gnarly parking area, and I followed him across, albeit uncomfortably, putting on a good face. Podiatrists will tell you barefoot on roads is bad but may be OK on trails; in my experience acorns, sticks and roots can be the trickiest obstacles.

What about broken glass?

I’ve run many miles in urban, suburban and rural settings. I’ve very rarely seen glass that could cut your feet. Occasionally I’ve had to avoid some. Once I felt something poking with every strike; I stopped and pulled a small sliver from my sole. That was once and it was nothing, but it’s prudent to watch where you are running.

Does barefoot mean barefoot?

I am always surprised at how many people, upon hearing that I run barefoot, ask if I wear “those funny looking foot gloves.” No, I run with nothing on my feet., you know “barefoot.” I do own a pair of Vibram Bikilas and I think they look pretty cool. I wear them in the gym, through fancy hotel lobbies and occasionally in extreme heat or cold. Do whatever works for you, but I’d suggest keeping an open mind to barefoot barefoot, especially for those just getting started.

How prevalent is barefoot running?

Less than I thought. I’ve been surprised how small the community seems to be. I’ve run in California—the land of what’s new and weird—and engendered strange looks. When I went for a run with Chris McDougall just prior to the Marathon, 100 people showed up to hear him speak and only a dozen or so were truly barefoot. It’s been great in a lot of ways; I’ve been in direct contact with virtually all the big names in barefoot running: Dan Lieberman, Ken Bob Saxton, Jason Robillard (included me in his excellent book for beginning barefooters), Chris McDougall, and Ted McDonald. The good news is that it remains fresh, novel and a topic of interest for many.

The Bottom Line- Is it good for you or bad?
The research inconclusive, actually amazingly so. There are plenty of people both for and against, but there seems to be no solid data to support the theory that barefoot is more healthy or fast, nor does there seem to be evidence that modern shoes reduce injury. Dan Lieberman’s work shows pretty clearly that the force curve increases less steeply for forefoot strikers than for heel strikers. And, there’s pretty strong agreement that barefooters run differently than shod runners, but not one has conclusively connected the scientific dots to more or fewer running injuries.

My own experience is that it’s easier on the knees and hips (although losing weight and cross training helps as well). The only downside for me has been my

Achilles tendons which still nag me now and again.

Bottom bottom line: It really is fun.

The weather was less than stellar, but cool for running. We gathered at Marathon central on the steps of the Boston Public Library. Two days before the big event, the town, particularly the Back Bay, was buzzin’ with runnin’ fever.

Chris blew in with a bang, just before noon. At 6 foot 4ish with shaved pate and Hollywood smile, he’s not hard to spot.  He’s about the most positive, engaging guy in the world and quickly whipped the crowd into a barefoot froth. After a little time with reporters and cameras, he pulled everyone together and introduced a number of other notables from the community: Tony Post, the Vibram CEO. Michael Sandler, the amazing (amazing cause he can run 50 miles—fast—with a titanium femur in his 1” shorter leg) author of the first barefoot how to book. Scott Jurek, 7 time winner of the Western States 100 mile ultra marathon. Lee Saxby, superstud running coach. Jeffrey Ferris, the local grandpa of barefoot running, with 42 years under his belt. And others. Harvard’s Dan Lieberman, the barefoot mad scientist, showed up at the finish line, perhaps saving strength for his 26 miles on Monday.

I was actually surprised at how few bare barefeet there were. I’d estimate 10% barefoot, 60% Vibrams and other minimalist shoes, and 30% traditional shoes, even after Chris talked some folks out of their shoes. The barefoot amongst us drew a lot of attention from reporters and interested, questioning bystanders. More than one press photographer asked to shoot my feet (and me without my pedi) though my Googling has not yet turned up any evidence. Even during the run I had several Q&A sessions with shod runners.

About 100 of us set off for an hour’s jaunt along Comm Ave and then the Charles. It was truly a fun run, everybody taking it very easy. Ten or twenty of the gang were warming up for Monday. What a hoot it was to finish at the Marathon finish line. Amazing how many people were there snappin’ pics and getting psyched for Monday. It was a nice chance to chat with barefoot brethren. Michael Sandler shared a few tips. Tony Post intimated to me that he occasionally drops the Vibrams and goes naked. I learned Dan Liberman’s secret recipe…Duncan Donuts blueberry muffin carb loading two days before race day.

Due to poor parking planning and dearth of quarters I couldn’t stay around for the workshop in the library’s Rabb Auditorium. I’d heard many of these guys speak before, but wish I’d known and planned. Nonetheless, it was a one best barefoot running experiences. Thanks Preston, Colin and Jim for pulling it together, and to Chris and the rest of the gang for making it special.