Hello all,
I need help solidly refuting the arguments of a very close friend of mine, around my age, 36, who has lost a hundred pounds, lowered his cholesterol (to a "safe" 170 or so) and no longer considers himself type-II diabetic following twelve months of a very high-fat, very low-"carb" diet and intense running in the past twelve months. He tends to bring up diet quite often and rips on established notions:
- The Lipid Hypothesis,
- That the body does not "process" fat but just adds it right into our fat cells (i.e. that the fat we eat is the fat we wear)
- That dietary oil enters the bloodstream (I've told him about sludge blood and he doesn't believe it's from oil);
- That starches are satiating (I've suggested that he try eating two sweet potatoes, but he asserts that it's more satiating, and--subjectively--tasty, to eat lots of non-starchy vegetables with oil, instead).
He also establishes his own notions:
- That oil is satiating because it is difficult to overeat on it without feeling nauseous and distended, and that this bad feeling is the body's mechanism to limit our fat/oil consumption
- That combining starch and oil makes it easier to overeat and that it is only when starches are combined with oil or fat that we gain weight (perhaps he has a point because insulin signals the body to store fat, and simple sugars spike the bloodstream's insulin levels)
- That omega3 fatty acids can be had in abundance on high-fat diets, whereas I am somehow making myself deficient in following the MWLP. I told him that all plants have omega3. He asserts that it is not enough for healthy living. How we evolved to this point before the advent of refined oil, then, is beyond me.
- That studies showing the supposed cons of eating fat and oil do not distinguish between the types of saturated fat or the types of oil.
- That fat in the body is traceable to the food that we ate. This is something that Dr. McDougall has mentioned in one of his recent webinars, and I'd like to find where this was shown clinically.
He dismisses my argument when I tell him that type 2 diabetes happens because oil plugs up insulin receptors and instead blames it on the "carbs"; according to him, if there is nothing in the bloodstream like carbohydrates to give the body an insulin response, then the body doesn't store fat.
To bolster his argument that a paleo diet is more effective at a sustained weight loss than a low-fat, high-"carb" one, he offers this study: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/2/276.full. From what I've read so far, the "low-fat" diet is not whole-plant-based so it doesn't control for binging on simple sugars.
I have not had the time to look at this. And I understand that in health studies, one study showing a divergent result is not as important as many studies pointing to the same result. I was thinking to refute it, or to show him many studies (Nurses' Study, Oxford-China Study, etc.) that show the same trend over time. I've tried to show him Plant Positive's videos, but he balks at the presentation format.
This is before I even talk to him about the greater implications of eating animal products, like saturated fat (which he eats quite a bit of in the form of animal products and coconut oil, believing it's all good for the body), dietary cholesterol (again, not a problem in his book), IGF-1, TMAO, etc.
Background: I had been a western-pattern-diet vegan since age 15 and then McDougalling since 2012 pretty much on the MWLP because I had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and a good friend opened my eyes up to it. I also steer away from gluten, owing to the MS. I've strayed over the past fifteen months or so, going to restaurants (though always vegan) and getting laxer about eating other people's food made with oil, and I gained around twenty pounds to show for it. I've cleaned up my act and hopefully will see this paunch disappear again.
And thank you everyone here who echoed this advice. So far I've just been nodding and smiling and not really giving my side of things, but I could only hear so much of this over the past year before I let out a statement in opposition as a knee-jerk reaction, and, well, the ball started rolling from there. You all are right, I'm just going to let him do his own thing. It's a shame though, because he's one of my closest core friends from the third grade, and I'm concerned that his Jim-Fixx-like mentality will lead him, his wife or kid to autoimmune diseases, a heart attack or worse. I don't have the heart to tell him, as barryoilbegone mentioned above, that the changes he's seen--as fantastic as they are--may be wholly temporary and contingent on him continuing to exercise. 
