Owsley Stanley's diet

Maybe some of you are familiar with the legendary Owsley "bear" Stanley, he was a huge LSD producer and distributer in the 1960's and soundman of the Gratefull Dead. He died a few years ago in a car crash at the age of 76 and he was a carnivore for over 50 years. Now his hair looked kinda shitty but overall he looked pretty fit for his age.

Here is a thread he started some years ago: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=287013


His wikipedia says
Stanley believed that the natural human diet is a totally carnivorous one, thus making it a no-carbohydrate diet, and that all vegetables are toxic. He claimed to have eaten almost nothing but meat, eggs, butter and cheese since 1959 and that he believed his body had not aged as much as the bodies of those who eat a more "normal" diet. He was convinced that insulin, released by the pancreas when carbohydrates are ingested, is the cause of much damage to human tissue and that diabetes mellitus is caused by the ingestion of carbohydrates.
Stanley received radiation therapy in 2004 for throat cancer, which he first attributed to passive exposure to cigarette smoke at concerts, but which he later discovered was almost certainly caused by the infection of his tonsil with HPV. He credited his low carb diet with starving the tumor of glucose, slowing its growth and preventing its spread enough that it could be successfully treated despite its advanced state at diagnosis.


I eat a lot of carbs (brown rice, potatoes and sourdesem bread) and i love them but i cant get rid of the fat around my belly and i feel tired a lot. Now i'm thinking of starting an experiment with only meat, coconut oil and eggs, some nutts and fruits. Nothing else. Are more people on this type of diet?
All these diets are so confusing and i know not one diet is good for everybody. Right now i eat mostly according to "the perfect healt diet" but i still have the issues i listed above. Also some of the vegetarian diets make sense but i just need the energy i get out of meat so thats no option.

I like this Owsley guy. For a couple reasons.

Things I've found eating nearly no carbohydrate:

- Mental clarity, focused, alert, mentally agile
- Anxiety and obsessive tendencies pretty much disappear
- Loss of body fat
- Satiation and loss of hunger between meals

On that latter one, I have found consistently that if I eat a meal high in protein, fat, and salt, I am totally satiated after very little food and go without hunger for hours and no energy roller coaster.

i just searched some pictures of him, still looks like he has hair loss. one of the few people ive seen that really has a good head of hair is ronald regan.. now what was that guys diet or lifestyle like?

Yeah his hair looked like crap. I also dont believe his theory that veggies are toxic. But i'm gonna try a nearly no carb diet and see what happens.

If you go no carb be careful overdoing the protein. If you take in too much protein your body can turn it into glucose I'm told. Keep the fat high, protein to about a gram per pound of lean body mass and the carbs minimal.

I've been eating this way religiously. I do about 30 grams or less of net carbs per day. My sleep is the best it's ever been in my adult life. My energy level is constant.

Every body is different and some people respond to this way of eating and other people can eat carbs and sugar and never gain weight. I think if you're struggling with weight problems, this is the way to eat. I have to force myself to eat because I'm so sated and usually when hunger hits I can quell it with a couple of bites of nuts/cheese/fat/protein. My wife jumped on it with me and it cured her eczema.

Its a critical error to believe someone has a certain physical trait or ability to perform something well because of something they're doing. Often times, its because they're built that way. The classic example is of swimmers. All too often you hear people say they want to do a swimmer's workout so they can get a swimmer's body. In reality, swimmer's typically find they're way to swimming because they are built that way naturally. Of course, they add muscle to their frames with fitness programs, but the principle is that they are good at swimming not because they trained so hard to be swimmers, but because they probably found they were naturally gifted because of their phenotype. Its the same with hair. Its a major bias to think a guy has a full head of hair because of something in particular he is doing. He could be doing it altogether the wrong way for you personally.

Or we could drops tons of acid, and not give a shit about hair loss anymore. "The colors, the colors!"

Hey hadrion can you give me an example of what you eat on an average day?

@odysseus Actually if someone is really depressed about their hairloss i think acid might be of great help.
It always had very profound effects on me and makes you look at things in a whole different way.
Its a beautifull substance but its not for everybody.

Too many carbs (especially refined) are tough on the pancreas, too much protein (especially without enough stomach acid) is tough on the kidneys. I don't believe there are any easy answers.

Instead I focus on what's absent from my diet - to complete and balance any deficiencies - rather than trying to change what already exists. Quality protein (for instance bone broth) and complex carbs (from whole grains) are way more important to me. Although I completely avoid refined carbs, which are one step away from simple sugars.

The people who overthink their diets don't always look particularly healthy to me. I believe visceral/subcutaneous belly fat is likely more a symptom of a lack of plentiful dietary phosphatidylcholine and glycine.

Maup wrote:Hey hadrion can you give me an example of what you eat on an average day?

@odysseus Actually if someone is really depressed about their hairloss i think acid might be of great help.
It always had very profound effects on me and makes you look at things in a whole different way.
Its a beautifull substance but its not for everybody.

You can learn to look at things in a whole different way without any kind of drug. But that's a different post. The point I was trying to make is that this person's credentials on diet and health are not something that would give me a lot of confidence.

And yes, acid can produce some remarkable effects, not that I would anything about that, of course. Still, it can be VERY dangerous for many people. Like pot on steroids.

You can learn to look at things in a whole different way without any kind of drug. But that's a different post. The point I was trying to make is that this person's credentials on diet and health are not something that would give me a lot of confidence.

And yes, acid can produce some remarkable effects, not that I would anything about that, of course. Still, it can be VERY dangerous for many people. Like pot on steroids.

Yeah what you say is true and i dont completely agree with Owsley's diet, i mean how can veggies and fruit be bad? I do find his carbs theory interresting so i'm gonna give that a try. As far as drugs goes, i hate them all but i dont really consider acid or shrooms a drug. For me its a tool and i feel they are good for my mind and soul if not used too ofton. Offcourse they should be used with great caution and if you have a history of mental illness you should stay away from it.

Maup wrote:Hey hadrion can you give me an example of what you eat on an average day?

@odysseus Actually if someone is really depressed about their hairloss i think acid might be of great help.
It always had very profound effects on me and makes you look at things in a whole different way.
Its a beautifull substance but its not for everybody.

Maup,

I literally almost eat the same thing everyday.

I have Bulletproof Coffee for breakfast.
Lunch I'll do a big baby spinach salad with chicken or steak in it, avocado, bacon & a blue cheese dressing I get from Whole Foods. If I do the chicken, sometimes I'll throw a few dashes of Franks Red Hot (buffalo sauce) in it. If I don't do my salad, I do a omelette with bacon, spinach and cheese in it.
That usually shuts me down and makes me not want to eat at night.  

Dinner sometimes is a rib eye with brussel sprouts or more spinach. Other nights we'll do a grass fed ground beef burger with bacon & an avocado on a bed of greens. I always try to get an avocado in at dinner to up the fat intake. We'll do Salmon every now and then. Sausage and peppers are a favorite and quick.

If I snack, it's a handful of macadamia nuts, or some almond butter - just watch the nuts portion because they do contain carbs after even after you subtract the grams of fiber in them to get net carbs. I can eat a couple of squares of dark chocolate provided it's above 85% and not loaded with sugars. I get cheese sticks from Trader Joe's - I used to be able to eat three in a sitting. Now one fills me up. I really don't get hungry on this way of eating.

Hadrion-Sounds good, thanks!

**** no/low-carb diets. I don't know how anyone could live like that. If I don't get at least 300g of carbs per day I am screwed- even just doing nothing. I have no energy. Let alone doing any kind of physical activity without carbs? Do these people just sit on their ass all day long?

DeadlyDevice wrote:**** no/low-carb diets. I don't know how anyone could live like that. If I don't get at least 300g of carbs per day I am screwed- even just doing nothing. I have no energy. Let alone doing any kind of physical activity without carbs? Do these people just sit on their ass all day long?

Wow. Thanks for the really intelligent mature response backed by science and date to provoke real discussion here. Some of us aren't blessed with metabolism's that work like yours. You clearly were descended from Olympus.

And for the record, I power lift 4x week and do HIIT 2x week besides living a busy active life.

Hah, you don't want my metabolism - trust me... there's not much good about it.

I don't have the patience to dig through the studies, but I'm aligned with the Ray Peat crowd as far as carbohydrates go. I know there is some variation in metabolism but I just don't believe that someone can function like that. I tried low carb for a while, it was nasty and I quit very quickly, but I ruined myself doing something even stupider and that was fasting. So I know what running on low carbs is like and it's not for me. My body demands that sugar and I need lots of it to function at max.

For the record - I get the majority of my carbs from fruit, and very little from grains. I think that the reason so many people have problems from carbs is that the biggest source of carbs for them is wheat.

So are you completely no carb or low (<50g) or what? And how long you've been doing this?

DeadlyDevice wrote:Hah, you don't want my metabolism - trust me... there's not much good about it.

I don't have the patience to dig through the studies, but I'm aligned with the Ray Peat crowd as far as carbohydrates go. I know there is some variation in metabolism but I just don't believe that someone can function like that. I tried low carb for a while, it was nasty and I quit very quickly, but I ruined myself doing something even stupider and that was fasting. So I know what running on low carbs is like and it's not for me. My body demands that sugar and I need lots of it to function at max.

For the record - I get the majority of my carbs from fruit, and very little from grains. I think that the reason so many people have problems from carbs is that the biggest source of carbs for them is wheat.

So are you completely no carb or low (<50g) or what? And how long you've been doing this?

I was doing Carb Nite with a Saturday night carb refeed after my heaviest day of lifting for most of the past year, but was stalling out weight loss/fat loss wise. Some of us are what they lovingly call "metabolically deranged" and need to be stricter. I keep carbs below 30g's a day and have been that way with no refeeds since February. When I consume sugar, it causes acid in my stomach and heartburn. Since changing the way I eat I no longer have any heartburn. I avoid all grains, wheat and sugar. I'll occasionally eat beans if it fits under my 30g's of carbs for the day.