It'd take a helluva lot of evidence to persuade me that eating grains is bad, because... heck, grains are tasty, and the vast majority of humans who have lived over the last five thousand years have had grain-based diets with no obvious ill effects. Likewise, if you think long slow-distance cardio is pretty much useless, go watch long-distance runners for a while.

My advice to anyone who is unfit and wants to be fit is to ignore everybody who's trying to sell you some very specific idea of what you have to do, and just concentrate on doing the lowest-common-denominator stuff: eat less junk, do more exercise.

This article is a pretty good treatment of specific problems with grains: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-grains/

Again, some people can be in good shape and eat grains. But if you want to be as healthy as possible they need to be avoided. Or if you're overweight/out of shape, removing them from your diet will definitely speed up the process of improving your health.

I know for my own body, it's best for me to avoid them completely. They have a very addictive quality for me, more so than anything sweet. Forget the ice cream, give me a roll!

Find me a professional athlete on a grain-free diet.

Maybe they're out there somewhere, but I'm pretty sure if you find me one I'll find you a better professional athlete who eats grains.

With so much effort put into finding optimal diets for athletes nowadays, if cutting out grains would improve fitness in any meaningful way then we'd know about it by now. If Lance Armstrong or Usain Bolt could go faster with a grain-free diet they'd be doing it.

edit: I found a link about Usain Bolt's diet. Turns out he eats quite a lot of rice:

http://dailyrunningtips.com/training/usain-bolt-diet-food/

Now I can't prove he wouldn't be even faster if he cut out the rice, but I am pretty sure it can't be doing him too much harm.

For the normal person who works out a few times a week and then sits at a desk 40 hours, I think removing grains would be very helpful.

A professional marathoner is a different story. Grains might make sense because of their carb density.

Maybe they're out there somewhere, but I'm pretty sure if you find me one I'll find you a better professional athlete who eats grains.

Find me a (former) professional athlete who lived in perfect health till their 90s.

Maybe they're out there somewhere, but I'm pretty sure if you find me one I'll find you multiple (former) professional athletes who died from CVD, cancer etc.

if cutting out grains would improve fitness in any meaningful way then we'd know about it by now. If Lance Armstrong or

Um, the guy who got cancer when he was 25 years old? Phenomenal athlete, but hardly a good example of a perfectly healthy person.

If you Google for "tabata research", you'll find a number of studies -- including the original paper by Dr Tabata [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897392] -- showing that bursts of very high intensity exercise can have a greater effect on endurance than long, steady workouts.

On the one hand, I find it counterintuitive (how can sprinting on-and-off for 5 minutes help my endurance more than running for an hour??). On the other hand, it kind of makes sense, since your body improves most when you really challenge it, and sprints are generally more challenging than a steady pace.

As an example, I have been training for 400m the last years. Being a short distance (although when you reach 300m you feel that is way too long) it is basically trained by repetitions of shorter distances (150/300). And by basically I mean that sometimes there will be longer distances (specially off-season) and tempo.

In general, people that train for 5000, 10000m don't run 1h to train their endurance. They will do, for example, 25x400m r:30", or shorter distances like 3000, 2000 or 1000.

There is no secret on that, you are using your body to run a higher pace that is used to, while running 1h will make your body be used to this slower pace and thus you will not improve your endurance.

If you ask me, I would say that endurance training is not worth it, and that training high intensity is better for your body.

Maybe I'll try incorporating some sprinting into my workouts.

I'm going to disagree that gluten has had "no obvious ill effects" because I've seen the changes in my clients lives, experienced it my self (gluten-intolerant) and my mother (Celiac). And your argument that eating grains is not bad because they taste good is preposterous.

As for LSD, can you tell what appeals to you about the physique of a marathoner?

Changing peoples eating and exercise habits is like getting people to quit smoking, they need to have the impetus to start, outside advice/encouragement only goes so far.

"eat less junk, do more exercise." I guess we differ on what "junk" is.

Ah, so you're someone who makes a living by selling diet plans? I'm afraid that if you're a professional x salesman that makes me somewhat less likely to trust your testimony on the advantages of x.

experienced it my self (gluten-intolerant) and my mother (Celiac)

Well obviously if you're gluten-intolerant then gluten is bad for you.

And your argument that eating grains is not bad because they taste good is preposterous

I'm not saying they're not bad because they taste good (cf cheesecake), I'm saying that it would take a lot of evidence to get me to stop eating 'em because they taste good. Basic price/benefit calculation: I'm not gonna give up bread and rice without a damn convincing reason.

As for LSD, can you tell what appeals to you about the physique of a marathoner?

Y'see now you're sounding like a salesman.

Changing peoples eating and exercise habits is like getting people to quit smoking, they need to have the impetus to start, outside advice/encouragement only goes so far.

True. I think crazy diet advice can really do a lot of harm, though, by making people think that getting fit is a lot harder than it actually is. Cutting out ice cream and cookies is easy, cutting out grains is very hard.

"Y'see now you're sounding like a salesman."

You didn't answer the question, you just accused me of something that's not true.

I think the best thing to do is end this conversation. We disagree on all the points up for discussion, and I'm guessing that nothing I type will convince you, and I'm certain that nothing you type will convince me.

Well, at least you realize you are irrational.

Certainly not. You just stop eating them. I stopped about half a year ago and never looked back. Well, my health was reasonably good so I can't say it improved dramatically since. However, I had some digestion issues before, these have been eliminated. This alone is enough for me to justify dropping grains, as digestion issues may become annoying and embarrassing at times. :)

I lean towards the paleo style myself, but I tolerate a little bit of compromise, and a little bit more when I'm with a friend. But I know intuitively how bad it is now - the effects I feel 15-30 minutes after consumption are mild but predictable.

Well, sugar, ice cream, cola - they are all tasty too.

Anyway, if you're interested in looking into ill effects of grain-based diets, there's a couple of links with some evidence.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology...

http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/m...