Has Anyone Else Realized A Metabolic Diet Ulitmatetly Leads One To Consume Primairly Liquids?

This was the biggest thing I noticed after shifting my diet over. Maybe it's just me and how my specific diet is tailored, but I usually find myself drinking most of my calories.

Daily consumption:
64oz of milk (well sugared)
32oz of orange juice (salted, with gelatin added)
32oz of coffee (sugared, salted, and collagen hydrolysate added)
20oz of chicken bone broth (defatted, salted, and fresh lemon juice)
8oz of Aroy-D coconut milk (no additives like gum, just pure 100% milk)
raw carrot (usually with coconut butter)
1lb of baby red potatoes
1 egg (fried in butter or tallow)
2-4oz of cheese
couple pieces of fruit (usually pears, mangoes, and applesauce)

Weekly consumption:
5oz of grassfed beef liver (twice weekly)
8oz of oysters (4 times weekly)
mineral broth made from kale (once or twice weekly)
cooked button mushrooms ( two or three times weekly)
3-4lbs of meat weekly (beef, lamb, cod, lean skinless chicken breast)

I'm pretty sure I'm drinking over 50% of my total calories, and probably well over 80% of my daily caloric intake. Does anyone else put up numbers similar to this?

 

Yes. I used to find it difficult, but now I find it tremendously convenient. Most of these foods require minimal or no preparation.

 

Yeah I don't mind it, in fact it is pretty easy like you said. I just keep thinking about mainstream nutrition practices. Drinking calories is a big no no, lol.

 

Not really. I dont drink milk, my protein comes from beef, seafood and eggs. I do drink 1-2 L of OJ daily, and alot of fruit.
It doesn't feel liquid to me atm. I salt everything heavily.

 

How do you keep your calcium/phosphate balance in check?

 

I think fructose lowers phosphate. Other than that, i don't really care. Phosphate is least of my worries right now.

 

Fair enough, I was just curious about your calcium sources. Calcium is one of the key minerals for improving metabolic function, among other things like lowering blood pressure. In fact I personally had high blood pressure back when I was doing the whole paleo thing. Didn't matter how much potassium I ate, by BP never improved. But after consuming milk I noticed it significantly improved.

 

The Ray Peat liquid diet is a meme.

 

Ray Peat Liquid diet = ultimate fail.

 

I don't think liquids are a good idea starting off in large quantities especially if the liquids are cold. I have come to realize that cold foods and liquids actually tend to be somewhat anti-metabolic, even if the food itself is pro-metabolic. I had a hard time keeping my temperatures up until I started to cook almost everything, including liquids (so I like teas/coffee a lot). I cook fruit now a lot too.

The problem is that your stomach is an oven of sorts, so it must waste energy in order to heat up in order to metabolize food you intake. So if you're already in an energy crisis, you dig yourself deeper into an energy crisis before your body can even use the energy from the food you just ate. In healthy individuals this isn't a big deal, but energy is a scarcity with someone with hypothyroid and you must conserve any and all energy at all costs.

I finally made this connection after I realized drinking OJ or eating raw fruit often made me more fatigued / have more brain fog afterwards and couldn't figure out what was going on.

You should have at least one hot thing with a meal, to help balance anything else in the meal that may be cold. And eat (or drink) the hot thing first to prime the stomach.

 

Exactly. And most people who purport that a Peat liquid diet is optimal are telling people to just salt their liquids and everything will be fine. This was not the case for me and I think it's a recipe for failure. Salt did not balance out the temperature-lowering effects of a high liquid diet. It certainly helped, but didn't solve it. Salt should be used to taste, and there is a problem with getting excess. When adding salt to liquids, it can be difficult to know how much to add without overriding our intrinsic taste senses.

Hot liquids are great. I think that hot food is even better though since it requires digestive energy to break it down, which creates heat for hours after you eat it. Stable heat production also means stable energy. I start noticing hypothyroid symptoms when I eat cold cereal or anything cold for breakfast. I've always felt best eating a small breakfast with eggs, toast, hot coffee- more stable energy.

 

I agree hot foods are better than hot liquids, I sometimes note very subtle hypo thyroid symptoms even with warm liquids.

We really need to make a big sticky thread somewhere on these forums for newbies, because it seems the #1 common mistake for new people is to overdo it with liquids, and without fail, almost all of them crash and burn and wonder where they went wrong.

It's not their fault, usually people do it because they read the infamous quote from RP saying he drinks a stupid amount of milk and OJ a day. Unfortunately (correct me if wrong), but RP doesn't talk much about warm/cold foods and how liquids may be problematic for hypothyroid. It's not that milk and OJ are bad, even cold, they can be fantastic for someone that has a functioning thyroid and especially someone who gets in the sun a lot and lives in a warm climate. There are actually some drawbacks to being too hot, so outdoors when its really hot, the cooling effect of a fruit can actually be beneficial rather than detrimental. Milk (especially raw milk) and OJ have fantastic nutritional profiles, which no doubt is why RP speaks so highly of both of them, but when cold, can cause problems.

Unfortunately, many people new to RP's ideas are hypothyroid, don't get enough sun, and often don't live in a warm climate.

 

So true. I agree that would be a great sticky. If you give me some time, I can put one together with studies showing how beneficial solid foods are over liquids. Many people scoff at the idea that the texture or temperature matter, but there are studies that show that it absolutely matters, one just has to look. It's super easy to get really caught up in nutritionism, judging food solely from a vitamin/mineral/nutrient perspective. This is where most go wrong. Nobody is arguing that we shouldn't be eating nutritious foods. What we are saying is that food preparation matters and it's highly individual, and as you said, dependent on environmental factors, etc...

 

You should also consider the lack of use of your teeth, tongue, and jaw musculature.

 

People come to Ray Peat in different states of health. Some are in far worse metabolic shape than others, which is why I don't think there is one-shoe-fit-all approach for everyone. So some may handle a lot of liquids, while others may not. When I got into Peating, I did okay on liquids, but as my metabolism took time to adjust and I fed it real nutrition, a lot of it's metabolic issues were revealed and came up from beneath all of the stress hormones, and I had to implement a diet of more solid foods. White rice was the only starch I could tolerate, and little meat. Milk, not so much. As my metabolism got better, I notice I could handle other foods better, but that I had to cut out starches. So I pretty much stuck to yogurt, meat, fruit, honey, shellfish, little milk. As my metabolism got better, I was able to handle liquids better. Whether I drink hot or cold liquids largely depend on the time of the year. Hot summers cause me to crave and want cooler foods while colder weather usually causes me to crave warmer foods, though I will still have warm foods year around including in summer time.

I think for healthier people, liquid foods are great because it requires less work for the body to process. Sure, solid food is also good, but constantly eating solid food throughout the day so that the body is digesting heavy/solid food 3 or 5 times a day, throughout most of the day can in of itself put a strain on the bodies digestive system. As I have healed over the years, I realize that I only need or crave one or maybe two solid food meals at most each day. I can do just fine eating mostly liquid meals and then having a solid dinner. In fact, usually if I eat heavy breakfast I feel terrible and sluggish for most of the day. A healthy protein shake takes me a longer way actually, and gives me more energy for much of the early day because I do not feel weighed down. I naturally dont have a huge appetite for breakfast anyway, so again, many of these things are very specific to the individual. It is best to listen to your body.

After years of trying all kinds of diets and cooking, I am rather sick of food and cooking. I am very happy with the convenience of a mostly liquid diet and I do just fine. As long as my main dinner is solid food, I get by just fine. I feel worse when I am digesting solid food throughout the day. I think the digestive system also needs a more of a break with easier to digest foods, so there needs to be some balance.

As of now, I am cutting/dieting, so I am on a more strict low PUFA diet than I have been, which means more liquids. So I am usually drinking a gallon of milk per day, and for dinner I will usually have some shell fish with egg whites and salted broth. I feel better this way. I feel 'lighter' and not sluggish, like I do when I eat more than 2 solid food meals per day. Solid foods have their place, but I also think it can be just as bad eating too much solid food at one time. I see this all around me, with people cramming down 100 plus grams of meat protein down in one meal. That in my opinion is far worse than liquid meals. Solid foods I think are healthier in smaller meals, with regards to the digestive system and not burdening it at once. I have noticed in the past that some people who were dogmatically opposed to liquid foods would turn out to be the same people who I'd catch cramming down a massive meal which included 100 or 200 grams of meat protein down their throat in one sitting and act like that was some how not as bad or 'healthier.' In fact, I would argue that animal foods such as meats are on average more nutritionally dense than many plant foods, and therefore it is healthier to eat them in smaller amounts. For example, your body can only use enough zinc from a few oysters at a time when consumed, so eating like a pound of oysters is pointless if you're trying to eat them for zinc. And even beef, there is a limit or sweet spot with how much zinc and protein calories of it you can eat at one time. Eating 2 pounds of beef for example won't mean you will use all the zinc from that two pounds. And I notice this too. Maximum energy when I eat a few hundred calories of meat or lobsters, but if I eat more I feel it has diminishing returns and causes me to feel more sluggish and digestion is slower and takes much longer. Same thing with the problematic amino acids, which in large amounts can be more anti-thyroid.

So I think balance is key and there is more nuance as well. As Peat says, context matters.