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Maybe it's the city I live in (which has a high obesity rate), but why is it that 90% of the time when an 'expert' tells me my 'crazy diet' is unhealthy, that person is overweight? Are they in denial about their own self? If my neighbor's garden was dead, and mine lush/green/productive, I doubt they'd come over and tell me to water less.

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 Who are these authorities recommending high intakes of red meat, HFCS, and refined grains? I cannot think of any. – foreveryoung Jun 7 at 17:01
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 There seems to be some confusion about what SAD means. The Standard American Diet is what people are eating, not what any "authority" is recommending. – Paleo2.0 Jun 7 at 18:17
Paleo2.0, I disagree. Whole grains, for example, are part of SAD, aren't they? – Renee Jun 7 at 19:21
Renee, you're probably thinking of the USDA food pyramid with the whole grains at the base. Not good either, but it and the routinely eaten SAD of fast food are different. – Karen Jun 8 at 0:13

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I hear you but I caution against equating someone's weight with their level of knowledge or their dietary beliefs. Case in point: Me. I love to talk to people about diet and food and I talk paleo whenever I see opportunity. To some, however, I must look quite foolish and certainly not the best source of information on dieting. You see I am 5'7" and weight 155 lbs. Not thin, skinny or anything even close. Just very average. So to look at me you might thing (and some have) that I must not know much about dieting or I'd be skinny.They think that until I tell them I used to weight 325 lbs and that not only am I half the woman I used to be but I've kept it off for 5+ years now. Their ears usually perk up after that. But what about the people who don't stick around long enough to hear my story? The old "Don't judge a book by its cover" is some very wise advise indeed. You can tell NOTHING about someone and what they know or don't know just by looking. What a person looks like and what they have to contribute to any given conversation about pretty much anything are not related.

Just because the doctor can't cure her own cancer does not mean her discoveries in the lab or her vast knowledge of the disease and it's treatments are null and void. If her cure rate is 90% when every other doc's is 50% but she cannot cure herself do you dismiss her? Not take her treatment? Not listen to her ideas? Surely not.

We have more than plenty of plump,zaftig, fat folk in paleo giving out advise. I won't name names but please. Let's stop with all of this "looks-ism" and dismiss people for their bad ideas or unsubstantiated beliefs and not for the way they look.

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 I hope more people take this to heart in the outside world. (Beyond PH.) I'll be starting a nutrition counseling business in a few months, and while I certainly look "okay," sometimes I take a good hard look at myself and think, "Who the bleep would take nutrition advice from ME?!" (But part of that is the voice in my head from the past, that still sees me in my old body. "Why is the fat girl giving us advice on how to lose weight?!") I saw the thread about "looking the part." I think it is important to set an example, but you're right - having all the knowledge doesn't necessarily mean... – Amy B. Jun 8 at 21:04
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 ...that we can apply it all the time, every single day, in ourselves. Sometimes I feel like a total fraud giving nutrition/weight loss advice, because I am sooo very far from where I'd like to be with compliance. BUT, I've come to see my perceived "flaws" or "failings" in this area as things that wiill actually probably make me a better practitioner. Much more empathetic, certainly, and probably a lot more human to my clients. Nobody's perfect, and I'll probably use that old saying: progress, not perfection. If you shoot for great, even if you fall short, you'll end up at good. – Amy B. Jun 8 at 21:07
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I was overweight eating lots of grains, low-fat dairy, white meat chicken, etc. (Plus lots of veggies and fruit.) And I worked out like a fiend. I think there are a ton of people on PH who were overweight proponents of the SAD (no pun intended, hehheh!)

It took about a decade of spinning my wheels to finally ask myself what the heck was going on when "all the right things" were not getting me anywhere. Some people ask themselves after 6 months, and good for them. I wish I had tried to put two and two together sooner than I did. Could have spared myself 10 years of tears, self-loathing, and piss-poor self esteem from blaming myself when all my best efforts got me nowhere.

I think a lot of people -- MDs and RNs and all the rest included -- tend to "see the light" only after they themselves get sick or gain weight and fail to see improvement after following the same advice they've given patients for decades. Unfortunately, most of us learn the hard way. William Davis, Cate Shanahan, Mike Eads -- these were medical "experts" who only learned the truth about food when they had to heal themselves.

And most of all, I think some SAD proponents are overweight because (like me, years ago), they can't possibly be heavy because of their diet. After all, they're "eating healthy." And let's not forget there are millions of people eating SAD who are perfectly fine, according to height/weight charts, but whose health is utterly, completely jacked up on the inside.

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 Yeah, the SAD has a built in escape. If you aren't seeing the results it's because you're not adhering to the diet properly. Since most people on the SAD have occasional junk food or don't get enough exercise, they can blame it on inadequate adherence. Oh well, they think, at least my heart won't explode from all that cholesterol the paleos are eating. – Diane Jun 7 at 18:20
@ Diane- so does every other diet have that same "built in escape" The diet that works is the one you can stick to. – foreveryoung Jun 7 at 22:27
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People find it often very hard to grasp that many of what they know and what 'authorities' have been telling them could be wrong. They also know one side of science (the side the government promotes, in this case a grain-based diet with little fat), but will rarely hear the other (in this case, paleo). It's not because it's another side of science, that it is not science.

Think about the food pyramid. It's been created by so-called experts (lots of lobbyists). You (a paleo enthusiast) basically just turn it upside down (more or less). That's hard to grasp for most people. Who are we, ordinary, non-expert citizens to question those experts? "You are supposed to listen to the people who know more about it than you do!" they'll say (or think).

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just let them have their life and live your own.

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Good analogy about the garden. It is not that they are stupid but that they have been taught the lipid hypothesis. We know that it is not the correct paradigm, they think it is. Google and read about Ancel Keys and the lipid hypothesis. This has been in the textbooks for 40 years and will die a hard death because people do not like change.

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 Having to admit that you've been wrong for the last 40 years is a tough pill to swallow. They also risk losing credibility (as they should) in the eyes of their patients. They have too much invested in the current system to effect change. We will have to wait until the old guard dies off and the newer and better-educated people take their places. – Nemesis Jun 7 at 22:17
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Perhaps they spend so much time on there work they don't get adequate sleep and physical exercise and possibly don't even get to prepare their own foods, becoming martyrs for their cause. No, actually it is because SAD doesn't work but I thought I'd mention a devil's advocate perspective.

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because USDA is stupid and people believe in USDA.

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