My Journey To Optimal Health

Blossom

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Fatigue is still pretty bad in general. I'm actually cancelling out visiting a friend because I just need to sleep in this weekend. My dad has severe chronic fatigue, he sleeps up to 16 hrs a day. Bad metabolism runs in my family unfortunately.

Update for the day - had another cup of coffee and seemed to normalize things. I guess I'm just going to be dependent on coffee for the forseeable future to keep things humming along.
For the longest time I kept caffeine pills on hand for when I just got tired of drinking coffee. I know they have no benefit besides caffeine but I really started getting sick of drinking coffee all day! :)
 
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Cirion

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Interestingly I woke up marginally more refreshed (still not great, but I could tell it was slightly better) today despite staying up too late. I would either attribute it to the chocolate I had in the middle of the night when I woke up or the fact that I actually decided to clean up some of the clutter in my house. I do note that I seem to be more moody when my house looks like a mess. I think it does clean up your mind too to clean up your living space.

Overall, my energy levels are still not super terrific though, and I can not really motivate myself with doing a workout more than once a week these days. Continuing to eat a lot and rest as I can.
 
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Cirion

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I decided to sleep 12 hours last night, skipping both my usual TV/video game routine and option to immediately do an Epsom salt/baking soda bath and go straight to sleep after. Felt a little better this morning. Think I need to keep doing that, it's too hard to get enough sleep if I get distracted by TV on weekdays, maybe I'll stick to TV on weekends only when I have the time.
 
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Cirion

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Nate told me I'm deficient in vitamin K (which I had suspected beforehand according to cron-o-meter). Had some spinach cooked in butter last night, felt good after that, which was confirmation that indeed I'm low in Vitamin K. I'm now reading his book and making notes/asking him questions as I go.

For documentation purposes, I figure it can't hurt to post what I've gleaned from the book here.

CH1:
Wheat is bad, especially the newer kinds after around 1960. If eating grains is still desired, need to prepare it properly to inactivate the phytic acid (sprouting for ex.) Grains should still not be the focal point of the diet, but is OK if its a safe kind. Riboflavin can help wheat digestion and improve gut, reduce damage of wheat. Solanine in nightshade is toxic and should be avoided (usually in the skin).
 
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Cirion

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CH2:
Lots of encouraging thoughts on how the body recovers from chronic stress, but also makes me realize I do have my work cut out for me. He talks about how the fat gain response is a totally normal thing to expect when healing, and in fact, as much as in the moment it sucks, you must actually promote some fat gain by eating the dietary fat that the body will crave in large amounts during this time (explains why I have an insatiable fat appetite). He says that this is the WORST possible time to decide you want to diet again to avoid the fat gain, because then you're adding more stress and even more fat gain later down the road, and an insatiable fat appetite is to be expected, and embraced. He does also talk about iron and how in this scenario iron overload is common, so I need to cut back on beef probably and other iron containing foods. Caffeine can help restrict iron intake, so I take caffeine always with beef now. As long as the fats you intake are GOOD fats (aka, saturated from chocolate, dairy, butter, beef) you're OK. Another poor move would be to eat PUFA's to satisfy the large fat appetite (which I would suspect is the reason why Matt Stone "eat everything in sight" philosophy does not work, what you eat does still matter). Vitamin C and other chelation methods can help with iron, but he emphasizes that iron overload is more a symptom of metabolic disease rather than the cause although chronic iron elevation can exasperate the problem, so the focus should be on fixing the metabolic problems in order to ultimately address iron overload. Being gentle with yourself, eating therapeutically (sugar, salt, good starch, good fats (saturated) quality proteins), and reducing stress, getting sunlight, all that good stuff, is very important during the healing process.

Another interesting note he talks about is in this scenario, your body will actually convert other minerals to Iron, so it becomes a massive problem - converting zinc and copper to more iron. So I'll probably stop taking zinc supplementation.
 
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Blossom

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That’s great @Cirion. I know you sharing your experience with the forum will help others!
 
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Cirion

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Yeah hopefully! I also like to have things written down so I can easily refer to them later on. Will be useful to have a quick summary of basically his whole book down, I plan to do a fair bit of reading this weekend. It is interesting to have your whole opinion of fitness/nutrition turned upside down on its head. Luckily, when you're desperate like me you have a pretty open mind haha.
 
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Cirion

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CH3 - starting to get to fun stuff. He talks about how we run off sugar (much like we've learned here at RP) and all sorts of disorders can be traced to not meeting these sugar needs. Talks about importance of avoiding bad fats, getting enough B vitamins ( I just ordered myself some nutritional yeast), and getting glucose alongside fructose. Emphasizes that sugar needs will be even higher in a disrupted metabolism because in this scenario, sugar ends up converting to fat and not being oxidized immediately for energy.

Takeaway? Time to eat more sugar. Lol. He says when he was recovering he would have to eat 4 lbs of straight sugar a week on TOP of all the fruit, healthy starches, syrup, milk, OJ, etc. Wow! lol

He talks about as kids we usually are more in tune with what we need. I know I loved sweet things as a kid and got them any chance I could. And how its perfectly normal for kids to be "picky eaters" when it comes to toxic foods like broccoli as a good example. I know I hated that stuff as a kid. Turns out I was right to hate it!
 
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Cirion

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I believe I have begun the stem the tide of my unhealth. I am bolding this so it's easy to find again later as a reference.

I say this because I experienced something new - normally when I get awakened in the middle of the night I feel really bad. This time I experienced something new... I woke up at around 1 am feeling euphoric, I was like what is this?? I don't even understand haha. I always get 1am depression not euphoria! Lol. I also experienced an epiphany as a result - it's all about your ability to hold sugar/glucose. At 6 am I started to feel bad again, checked temp, 97.9. Went back to sleep to see if more sleep would help... it did not, I used to think oh I just need more sleep, but now I see where the whole thought of "too much sleep" comes into play, its a half truth, based purely on whether or not you let your blood sugar tank too low (healthy people can go 12+ hr without this happening, so for them, sleeping 12 hr is actually OK). Anyway, at 8 am it had dropped again to 97.3. Now, I think I will begin to implement a new strategy with this in mind. Once my temperature drops below around 98 deg, I plan to just wake up (so today, I should have just started my day at 6 am to avoid blood sugar tanking further).

Everything that I did yesterday that contributed, so that I can remember

@ wakeup

2 cups of coffee from organic, ground the beans myself - each cup had around 4-6 oz of goat milk, and 4 TBSP of cane sugar.
2 apples
1 cup OJ with baking soda / white vinegar (sodium acetate)
10 mg DHEA between each cup of coffee (20 mg total)
100 mg pregnelone
? mg Niacinamide (will have to check dose later)

@ between lunch & early afternoon
1 lb grass fed beef with 2 tbsp. of butter, cooked in 2 tbsp. of coconut oil and lots of sea salt
6 whole sweet potatoes with lots of sea salt
cup of OJ with Himalayan pink salt added
6 apples all generously salted w/ sea salt

Took a 30 minute walk outside in the sun

@ around dinner
2 large pieces of goat cheese
Spinach/Mushroom/Carrot "salad" (half of a large spinach pckg, a whole small mushroom pckg, one whole carrot, 2 tBSP of nutritional yeast, 2 TBSP of butter
4 cups of OJ, all salted, one of the cups was sodium acetate
Supplemented:
Magnesium glycinate (300 mg)
Vitamin D (25,000 IU)
Vitamin E (1000 mg)
Vitamin B1 (? mg - have to check)
Activated Charcoal (? mg - have to check)

Also watched a funny anime while eating. Sleeping on a 6 deg inclined bed, facing East (will try moving to North after reading up on that), foam mattress.

What I think is important from what I have learned thus far
Lots of quality calories is actually I think the biggest factor. Need lots of saturated fats, lots of sugar, lots of starch, lots of everything. The body can not heal without the building blocks from which to do so. If you feel bad, generally its blood sugar too low and you need to carb load, at least that's how it is for me. Supplementation has its uses, but I'm trying to get most of what I need from food. Nutritional yeast seemed to do me a lot of good in particular, I learned this from Nate. That and the mushroom for riboflavin, and spinach for the vitamin K, and sunlight for vitamin D (though I am supplementing as well, to really get my D levels up). I don't have a lot of nuts, hence vitamin E supplementation. I might experiment with like 2 oz of nuts a day (even though they have PUFA, 2 oz of nuts (almonds) can give you a good amount of nutritional vitamin E. And sweet potatoes/carrots give me my vitamin A.

What has held me back - being worried about getting fat. You MUST eat, and a lot, and very often. I stopped caring, and now I think that's why I'm improving. And you must not restrict fat. In fact I eat TONS of fat. Don't even care what people have to say about "too much fat" even if it's Ray Peat. It makes me feel better, so I'm gonna do it. I eat butter, coconut oil, whole milk, beef, chocolate and unapologetic ;) The more you eat, the more you can maintain a high body temp and pulse. The more you can maintain a high body temp and pulse through nutrition, the more you'll heal. Any time your body temp and pulse drops, and you don't fix it, you're causing more damage to yourself. So restricting food intake is bad, and will continue to make you spin your wheels.

also and this is important supplements WILL NOT HEAL YOU especially if your nutrition is poor. I cannot emphasize this enough. Yes I take some supplements but I don't rely on them, in fact I could probably get rid of most/all of them and still be healing. Yes some things like thyroid, DHEA can help speed things up but they won't even work in the context of a poor diet. The only "supplement" I think you NEED is salt, because sodium is about the only thing it's hard to get enough of.
 
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Cirion

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Cirion

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Interesting, yeah I don't pretend to fully understand many of the concepts, thanks for that link, very interesting!
 

Runenight201

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Cirion bro I’m experiencing a much similar dilemma you’ve faced. My energy has been amazing the past week, and yesterday was the first day I slept 9 hours through the night and then didn’t nap during the day. Liberating my diet a lot has really improved all markers of my health, except for the weight X.X

I’m up 6 pounds from the past month...but luckily some of it has come from muscle as I’m much stronger in the gym.

My theory is that if I can do more bodyweight exercises compared to before, then my strength to weight ratio has improved and I’ve gained more muscle than fat, even if my total weight has risen.

I hope I experience the same weight loss that @Blossom eventually had...I really don’t want to reach 200 lbs again at 5’9” =(
 
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Cirion

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The weight gain is completely normal and will happen to just about everyone. Nate talks about this in his book. It is in fact why most people fail - because they think it isn't working, decide to go on another diet (or remain on Peat, but drop calories and/or dietary fat), spin their wheels, fail to get better and many times just cause even more damage - because you tricked the body into thinking you're finally giving it enough calories to heal up, but then take them away again.

Gwyneth gives a good overview over what happens during recovery as well. The only thing I vehemently disagree with is her advice to chow down on "ultra processed foods" to get a lot of calories in quickly. I have nothing against calorie dense foods, but eating processed foods is always a mistake to do. Other than that, good article.

Extreme Hunger 1: What Is It?

Extreme Hunger Part 2: The Experience and Science

Having Nate as my coach helps keep me on track. He is comforting me as I go, making me realize that eventually it gets better and the weight will begin to come back down once you're healed.

Honestly I barely hit the gym anymore. I find it detrimental to my healing. I only workout maybe once a week these days and for less than 30 minutes. If you have the energy go for it, but I haven't had enough energy most days.

That's awesome that you can last 9 hr without food now bro, I'm genuinely jealous! You're probably getting much closer to recovery, so keep at it! I can't guarantee you won't reach 200 lb, but I can almost guarantee that if you do, you'll probably eventually lose it later on down the road. Trust me I know your feeling, I am getting almost obese myself, I have to have faith in the process though. Your feeling better and lasting longer without food is proof that you're making progress.
 
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Runenight201

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Some crazy ***t just went down.

I was feeling bloated when I had weighed myself a couple hours ago at 182.4

After eating some pork chops with Coca Cola and drinking water, which then produced 2 bowel movements, a re-weighed myself and I was at 178.8

I had 3.6 lbs of bloat in me...nasty

I feel so much lighter and better now. When I was bloated earlier my breathing was heavier and I felt uncomfortable.

Digestion and keeping things moving is really crucial.
 
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Cirion

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Learned a thing or two this weekend. After doing more reading I think I'm close to finding out why I have a hard time "turning on" my metabolism in the mornings (and had problems with that this weekend actually). I have to take proper steps to activate the kyurenine pathways, and according to Nate, the hardest part is "turning them on" each day, after which it is easier to keep them going. In a way it's like starting a lawn mower, it is hard work to get it started and you gotta pull the cord hard, but once it is started, you just gotta make sure it is fueled. Lo and behold, I used his trick of a cup or two of warm milk plus one half cup of sugar plus one tablespoon of gelatin after struggling to get going today and viola, it worked just as Nate said it would.

I also learned another thing - I have a new found respect for Vitamin C. I plan to take supraphysical dosages, even higher than Nate recommended, based upon what I've experienced today as well as read in several locations. Apparently many old school / holistic Dr.'s are big fans of supraphysical dosages of vitamin C, especially with a disease of some sort (apparently high dose vitamin C can cure even major diseases, many of which are considered "uncurable", such as HIV, with as much as 200 grams (yes grams, not milligrams) of vitamin C a day. I won't be having that much, but possibly as much as 20 grams a day. I had like 12 grams today and it seems like the more I take the better I feel, this was also inspired by some reading of Nate's book, and like I said other research that seems to show that vitamin C can purge bad bacteria in general, and so much more (heavy metals, possibly halides). I think one Dr. went so far as to prescribe 2000 grams (or 2 million milligrams), I forget what for exactly. Sometimes, I feel like the Dr's from the early 20th century are smarter than the ones today who use drugs for everything...

The trick with Vitamin C is that it is only effective in appropriately high dosages. There has been some research to "Disprove" the effectiveness of Vitamin C... the only thing is, they used VERY low dosages (often less than a gram), which some folk would argue is not enough, even for healthy people, let alone diseased... like check this guy out for example...

https://fatburningman.com/dr-andrew-saul-the-megavitamin-man-high-dose-vitamin-c-diy-health/

It's one of nature's antibiotics... which is what I need to finally kiss my bad bacteria goodbye! I think he takes like 15-20 grams a day even when healthy, and I've read in other places the magic number is 18, so it seems like you can't go wrong with like 20 grams.

Medical doctors have been stopping and curing Polio with high doses of Vitamin C since the 1930’s. In the 1860’s and 70’s they were curing pneumonia with Vitamin C therapy.

We’re talking ½ million to 2 million milligrams of Vitamin C a day. That’s a whole lot of Vitamin C!

It's aggravating that in 150 yrs we have not only progressed, we have regressed in medicine in many ways. Vitamin C CURES most diseases, and yet we still use outdated methods and drugs that are often worse than the disease.
 
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Blossom

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I'm interested to see how it goes with the vitamin C. @Janelle525 has had success with vitamin C.
used his trick of a cup or two of warm milk plus one half cup of sugar plus one tablespoon of gelatin after struggling to get going today and viola, it worked just as Nate said it would
Nice.
 
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Cirion

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I think it is going to be more effective in someone like me who is metabolically damaged, and probably full of toxic heavy metals, halides, iron, aluminum, mercury, and other problematic compounds, but I do think everyone can benefit from a high vitamin C dose. If you listen around, you will note that just about all health experts advocate at least 10 grams a day.... I also know someone else who cured his hypo problems and he does 10g a day.

A friend asked me if I was gonna get the flu shot I was like nope I'm good, I'm not gonna get the flu, and if I do, I'll just take a godly sum of vitamin C lol

The lovely thing about vitamin C is the worst thing it can do is nothing pretty much, so contrast that to an antibiotic Rx that will probably nuke most/all of the good bacteria as well.
 
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Cirion

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Have some intense brain fog and fatigue today. I wonder if it is because I am starting to experience some intense detox from the increased iodine and vitamin C intakes. It's weird because my pulse and temp is great (88 bpm and 99deg F), so that's the only thing I can figure. I have heard that bromide detox symptoms can be brutal.

I took my iodine dose in the morning (close to 20 mg), so that's why I suspect this was the cause.

Update - started loading up on vitamin C, 2 grams (2000 mg) every 30 min to an hour, seems like symptoms are improving. Seems like a massive vitamin C dose definitely helps with the detox symptoms.

After more digging, I now believe some "moles" I have had for a long time are due to bromide poisoning. I don't have a ton of them, but that's my suspicion. My suspicions will be verified if they eventually go away through iodine treatment. In my younger days I used to drink LOTS of Mt. Dew (note - Bromine...) No wonder I had the worst depression of my life when I was younger. If Only I could go back in time and tell my idiotic younger self to avoid that poison. Ironically, my body knew it needed sugar to heal (craved lots of sweet things), unfortunately for me, that sugar came with poison (bromine), and in the long run, the bromine hurt me more than the sugar helped, so it was like being a druggie looking for the next "hit" even though each "hit" causes damage despite making you feel briefly good.
 
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