Saturated Fat Deficiency

[somuch4food]

I have started going for a high fat diet (butter added to meals, whole fat dairy, animal fats). My hunch is that my dry skin comes from a lack of cholesterol. The situation is becoming worse with the cold temperature outside. I'm also pondering if we are not meant to eat more fat in winter to protect against the cold and more carbs during summer.

Here is an extract from a book about benefits of saturated fat:
https://tim.blog/2009/06/06/saturated-fat/comment-page-2/

It shows that saturated fats affect many systems in the body. With the propaganda that saturated fats are bad for health, it might have just created a deficiency in so many people, including me.

 

[Cirion]

I'm not sure about the dry skin (probably another low metabolism symptom) but yes, everyone here is a big fan of saturated fats (especially those high in stearic acid).

There's the on-going debate as to "how much" saturated fat relative to carbs/sugar, so there's not a clear answer on this, especially when weight/fat loss enters the equation. A popular opinion though is that sugar intake should be way higher than fat, and I am on the fence about this.

My personal opinion for what it is worth is that if you're craving and easily gaining weight when increasing fat intake, that actually means you probably need it. The body only really easily gains bodyfat when there's a problem or a perceived problem going on. Keeping calories low in an attempt to avoid the body fat gain response is only a Band-Aid solution (IMO)

I think once your metabolism heals up, that it seems like you can handle less fat and more sugar, but I think for most people newer to RP's ideas, this is usually not the case, there's generally a malfunction in the sugar metabolism that must be slowly healed.

And yeah, mainstream nutrition has unfairly demonized saturated fats such that a lot of people actively avoid them, which is unfortunate.

 

[somuch4food]

I'm actually struggling with eating enough calories. Since having stopped almost all processed foods, I have lost way too much weight. Funny how hard it is to actually overeat freshly prepared food.

I think dietary fat helps metabolism by relieving the reliance on sugar to synthesize fat cells and cholesterol.

I entered what I ate today in cronometer and thought I had eaten a lot. I have about a thousand calories including added sugars and butter after lunch... I think even with processed food I was probably undereating...

The salt also is crazy. I can actually add as much as I want and I barely get 2000 mg of sodium.

 

[Cirion]

Yeah to be clear even in a healthy metabolism you always need fats for optimal metabolism, its just that the % compared to carbs will shift a bit. You might go from say 50% calories from fats to 25-30% (as an example). Almost no one will recommend a zero to ultra low fat diet here, unless you're trying to lose fat, and even then I don't recommend trying to lose fat until you heal. Just to add though, if you're feeling good with lesser calories and less fat then great, you're probably fine. Some people do lose fat starting off RP right off the bat (and I'm jealous of them lol), but usually there's at least a few lbs of gainage starting off.

I wish I had your problem - I have no problem downing calories like there's no tomorrow. I basically eat at least 4000 calories every day now, often more, lol. But, I'm primarily going by appetite, and obviously my body needs the calories to heal, so I have to provide them.

It's definitely hard to get enough salt, let alone too much (imo). I just salt everything, and have two baking soda + ACV drinks a day. Problem is stress makes you lose minerals, which increases the requirements. With the high amount of recommended potassium from fruit, OJ, etc, sodium becomes even more important to prevent a K:Na imbalance. This also applies to magnesium, calcium, chloride (usually easy to get this through NaCl aka salt though), and potassium (but I don't worry about potassium because I have a lot of fruit) and also some lesser known or appreciated minerals like boron.

Mood, appetite, body temp and pulse should be pretty much your four main guides for how much to eat. If my mood and pulse is low it means I need to eat, regardless of appetite generally. Oftentimes I will notice that when my mood is poor I actually don't have much of an appetite, so that even though I need to eat I don't feel like eating, ironically enough. That's likely the elevated stress actually suppressing appetite though.

 

[johnwester130]

the dry skin is burr's disease

a zinc b6 deficiency

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturatedfats.shtml

 

[tankasnowgod]

I'm actually struggling with eating enough calories. Since having stopped almost all processed foods, I have lost way too much weight. Funny how hard it is to actually overeat freshly prepared food.

I think dietary fat helps metabolism by relieving the reliance on sugar to synthesize fat cells and cholesterol.

I entered what I ate today in cronometer and thought I had eaten a lot. I have about a thousand calories including added sugars and butter after lunch... I think even with processed food I was probably undereating...

The salt also is crazy. I can actually add as much as I want and I barely get 2000 mg of sodium.

Yeah, if you have a problem keeping weight on, go for it. Absolutely. Put butter on everything you want to put butter on! It's delicious.

Personally, I have found that 20-30% of calories as fat is pretty sweet spot. Less than that creates digestive problems.

 

[Sourdoughbanana]

Less than 10% is too little for me, but countless people on earth don’t go over 20%. The book “Fats that heal, fats that kill” describes that pretty well. We need amino acids, glucose, vitamins, minerals. We benefit a lot from other phytonutrients and countless other stuff that hasn’t been really quantified by western science. High levels of fatty acids are no such thing as deemed essential.

They can absolutely be convenient if the environnement is rough and the metabolism is suffering. Brings calories up. However if you eat too much period, fat will make you fat very readily. There’s always the ketogenic outlier but the % of people who eat a keto diet is so small I don’t really care about that argument.

There isn’t such thing as a saturated fat deficiency, and the recommendations to shoot for ~5% of calories from saturated fats is more than enough. There’s indeed such a thing as vitamin/mineral/caloric deficiency or an impaired glucose metabolism.

There’s absolutely no need for fats to manufacture cholesterol, insulin will activate its synthesis. Increasing fatty acid and thereby the risk of insulin resistance doesn’t sound reasonable at all. High fat diets (saturated or not) correlate very well with all sorts of disease.

 

[Cirion]

You make some good points, but I think care must be given to tell everyone that they should cut back most of their calories from fat. I'd argue you need more, not less calories from fat when metabolism is compromised. I myself (and many here) have experienced worsening symptoms by dropping fats and having a dramatic % of intake from carbs. I was constantly wired on stress hormones and on a massive blood sugar roller coaster when I attempted to go mostly calories from carb. In fact in some ways I had a harder time controlling calorie intake on low fat vs. high fat because carbohydrates just don't satiate the appetite (not for me anyway), they just continue to stimulate it until before you know it you're sitting at 5000-6000 calories with 1000+ g carbs (not a typo and yes, this happened to me on low fat diet). In my personal experience, having too many calories because of fat is a myth, and I can actually readily consume MORE calories when I drop the fat. Most of what you say only applies to a healthy organism. An unhealthy organism cannot manufacture cholesterol without fat very well.

Again (and this is my opinion, but based upon experiences) you can not go high carb low fat until you're healed. If you have a poor sugar metabolism, then your body can't properly utilize the sugars you eat, making you want to eat more and more and never being satisfied and thus still being continually stressed because your body needs the energy desperately but can't get it despite eating. The fat can give your poor body a break and stabilize the sugar roller coaster. AFAIK (I'm open to correction if I'm wrong), most the studies that show fats being a problem include MUFA and/or PUFA's along with the SFA's, unfairly demonizing the SFA's.

Always be wary of extremes. Low-fat is nonsense, as is low-carb. Balance is usually the key, that's why I like it when RP says he thinks the "optimal macronutrient breakdown" is "probably about 33/33/33", which intuitively makes sense.

Just my 2c. And I'm no expert, and still have plenty of health issues myself, so feel free to ignore me lol.

 

[cyclops]

An unhealthy organism cannot manufacture cholesterol without fat very well.

Why not? And couldn't you just eat foods high in cholesterol?

 

[Cirion]

Why not? And couldn't you just eat foods high in cholesterol?

I'm the wrong person to ask for the nitty gritty details why not. A good question. Maybe someone can chime in on the reasons why (or tell me I'm completely wrong haha). My very basic understanding is simply because sugar is not utilized well with someone with liver problems / some level of insulin resistance, so it stands to reason that it probably can't convert to cholesterol well either. The ultimate goal, of course, is to get to a point where you DO use sugar well, and therefore the sugar IS converted to cholesterol well, but I don't think I'm at that point yet myself.

And yes! My strategy for now entails eating high cholesterol foods for now at least.

 

[Glassy]

I used to believe I needed a certain amount of fat to feel satiated. It was one of the things I experienced going very low carb for a year (an almost total loss of cravings). Looking back I wonder how much of that was from going back to eating food prepared from largely raw ingredients instead of processed which had minimal PUFAs and other garbage.

In the past I’d tried low fat and struggled with appetite and adherence. After reading about Kempler’s rice diet I decided to give it a try without limiting salt (basically eating a lot of well cooked rice and potatoes with some low fat protein sources). I slowly took my fat intake from low to almost nothing (sub 10g per day). I actually feel pretty good eating that way although the food choices got pretty tedious. I put on about 2kg pretty quickly but I suspect it’s water weight and my weight does fluctuate quite a bit (at 105kg - 2kg isn’t much). I add butter and cook with tallow here and there now but some days I still go sub 10g fat. I’ve experienced no dry skin but I do feel hotter especially after eating and I’ve been getting a few pimples (could be unrelated). I have no problem with hunger (carbs aren’t calorie dense so I figure I can indulge my apetite somewhat) and I’ve started intermittent fasting again with no issues. The only time my hunger becomes insatiable is the days when I workout. Those days I get super hot from all the carbs and the exercise, but it feels amazing. I don’t count calories but I have a big appetite (I was eating around 3 cups (dry measured) rice per day plus a whole heap of sugar from fruit, maple syrup, juice, fat free milk and lollies.

To be clear, I’m not advocating a low fat diet just saying I thought that fat was necessary until I experienced that it wasn’t. I also don’t plan to eat this way forever but I would also like to see my abs. I feel like my metabolism has increased to something that is closer to “my normal” (which used to be quite high).

 

[Sourdoughbanana]

Again (and this is my opinion, but based upon experiences) you can not go high carb low fat until you're healed

But that’s exactly what I’m doing with my guys, what the vegan doctors are doing with their patients, and they all heal within weeks if not days.

You probably had the wrong kind of carbs like oft seen in this forum: fruit/orange JUICE, dairy (low fat at that), table sugar, Mexican coke, and so on.

People just don’t want to stick to whole fruits, vegetables and tubers it seems. I admit that’s specific to some carbs but I did not talk about carbs much, more like saying that high fat never makes sense unless harsh climate etc. Too many calories because of fat is the reality of billions of people nowadays.

 

[Cirion]

@Glassy yeah I think you are saying almost the same thing as me actually. I notice you said you "slowly went to low fat". The body flips out if you decide one day to do a drastic change in macro percentages.

I think the confusion with what I wrote is that I'm always advocating higher fat intake, which is not really the case. But I do think you have to ease into higher carb intakes to make the transition gentler. That said, there are at least 2-3 users I know here in good health who still eat a pretty high fat diet and are lean etc. How long did it take you before carbs truly satiated you? I have never been able to reach this point.

@Sourdoughbanana
Not to sound argumentative, but all of the foods you listed are mostly in fact staples that RP often speaks highly of, why do you dislike all of that? Do you not eat dairy at all either? How are you getting your calcium? I notice you specifically make a point to criticize low fat dairy (I tend to as well), but if you're not a fan of higher fat intake, that definitely means high fat dairy is off the table as well? If the point you're trying to make is that if you're not careful you can be deficient in nutrients if you have, for example, too much cola and added sugar, then yeah, I can understand that, but cola is not inherently bad, a diet deficient in nutrients is what's bad.

BTW for the record I tried eating a LOT of fruit and yeah, that's when I was doing 1000g of carb a day and not being satisfied. I could pound 20-30 pieces of oranges or apples as an example and just not be satisfied until I had some fat with it.

Another thing is that a lot of people attribute losing weight / lean-ness with health, as a way of promoting a certain way of eating, which is a dangerous thing to do. Just because something makes you lose weight, doesn't make it healthy. Similarily, just because something makes you gain weight, doesn't make it unhealthy. What makes you feel good means it is healthy, what makes you feel bad means it is unhealthy (being careful to distinguish the "false healthy" feeling you can sometimes get from stress hormone elevation).

I'm admittedly dubious of your claim of healing within days. PUFA stores can take upwards of years to restore, and depending on the damage of the individual, can take months or longer to heal tissue/organ/cellular damage caused by years of stress. Everyone wants a quick fix (I wouldn't mind one) but there really isn't one sadly

 

[Jennifer]

I have started going for a high fat diet (butter added to meals, whole fat dairy, animal fats). My hunch is that my dry skin comes from a lack of cholesterol. The situation is becoming worse with the cold temperature outside. I'm also pondering if we are not meant to eat more fat in winter to protect against the cold and more carbs during summer.

Here is an extract from a book about benefits of saturated fat:
7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat

It shows that saturated fats affect many systems in the body. With the propaganda that saturated fats are bad for health, it might have just created a deficiency in so many people, including me.

I find I crave more fat (from coconut) during the winter months here in New Hampshire. It helps satiate me (my appetite is ravenous this time of year) and warm me up some but in terms of skin health, I find fruit carbs are what help my skin the most. Fruit leaves my skin extremely soft and clear to the point that I don't require moisturizers even during the winter. I do use coconut oil on my skin, but that's mainly as a natural SPF (my skin gets quite fair during the winter) and a carrier for essential oils.

I agree, it's hard to overeat calories on unprocessed food. I eat a fruitarian diet and require over 3000 calories daily, currently. That's a lot of volume. lol As my main fat source, I typically eat 1lb of young coconut meat a day which is roughly 25g of fat. This puts me at 10% of calories from fat for the day. In the summer it can get as low as 5%. Anything more than 10% and I notice my circulation starts to suffer — limbs fall asleep easily while in a seated position and I get cramping while practicing dance.

 

[Dolomite]

@Cirion I agree that if your metabolism is better you can eat less fat. Two and a half years ago I started eating the Peat foods and I had lots of spells of low blood sugar and panicky feelings. So I started drinking 2% milk instead of 1% and that seemed to do the trick. Lately I have been adding small amounts of regular whole milk to the 2% lactose free milk. Then last week I quit drinking the lactose free milk and am only using 1/2cup of regular milk so my fat and milk consumption dropped dramatically. But I am not having the starving spells a few hours after eating even though I haven’t added other fats. I am eating more protein and fruits.

 

[Cirion]

Yeah I think I was just seeing somewhere earlier where someone quoted that RP had said in a healthy individual, you can go as long as around 16 hrs without eating without a stress response. I personally can't go more than a couple of hours without a stress response. This is in my opinion why intermittent fasting is not good for the general populace, but can be OK for someone who is healthy and can afford to go a while without food. If I don't have fat with a meal (or not enough of it), my time before I get another stress response can be as quick as 15-30 minutes later.

 

[somuch4food]

I eat a fruitarian diet and require over 3000 calories daily, currently.

I'm curious about your diet. Tell me more.

I was craving fruits a lot until a few weeks ago. I'm now more attracted by starch and fat, must be the winter coming.

 

[Runenight201]

I think there’s a correlation between Resting metabolic rate, stomach size, stomach acid and ability to derive all calories from carbohydrates (mainly starches).

If you look at starch based populations, they are all very, very lean. I’m sure when I was 18 and only weighed 135 pounds I could thrive on a starch based diet, because the amount my stomach could hold and my metabolic needs aligned up very closely. Now that I’m sitting at 175, there’s just no question a starch only diet fails for me every time. My stomach cannot fit all the food I need in order to maintain my metabolic needs.

I feel much, much better with fat in my diet, and the weight is slowly dropping. I think the leaner one becomes, the more calories can be derived from starch and the less from fat, as stomach size and RMR will more closely align.

So i agree, in those with messed up metabolisms and who are overweight, fat is necessary. Perhaps for optimal health fat is necessary, because a balance of all the macronutrients signals to the body that there is no famine or starvation, energy is in abundance, so it can produce all the happy, feel good hormones and thyroid it needs for optimal functioning.

 

[Jennifer]

I'm curious about your diet. Tell me more.

I was craving fruits a lot until a few weeks ago. I'm now more attracted by starch and fat, must be the winter coming.

Probably. Starch and fat are dense calories so it makes sense to me why you would be craving them now instead of fruit.

My diet? It's pretty simple. I buy extra fruit in season and freeze it so that I have a constant supply year round. The majority of my calories come from melon (watermelon, honeydew, galia, canary etc.), fresh pressed OJ, grapes, berries, peaches, apricots, apples, pears and to a lesser extent, young Thai coconut meat and water (salted with French Celtic sea salt), heirloom tomatoes (salted), limes, kiwis, figs, jackfruit, mangos, papaya, dragon fruit, raw juice powders — pineapple, strawberry, black mulberry, mangosteen and alfalfa (I just started experimenting with the alfalfa) and freeze-dried fruit — pineapple, peaches, mangoes and Chinese pears. I also eat raw olives and avocado, but haven't wanted them lately.

 

[somuch4food]

@Jennifer How many cups of fruits do you eat per day?