Weight Loss: Starch And Trytophan Are What Are Stopping You

[YourUniverse]

Yes, the most ideal path is if you could get in touch with your sub-conscious and actually know what to eat. Almost no one can do this though, and I certainly can't. Rather than complain about it though, I do what I can do, is monitor how my body responds to different food choices and act accordingly. I know there is literally zero chance I can ever fix my intuition, so there's no point trying. That's not fatalistic, it's reality. If it were possible I certainly would have accomplished it the first 25 years on thie earth where I didn't care what I ate. And again, orthorexia was NOT what destroyed my health. It was in fact not having orthorexia that destroyed my health! So no, I'm not using the path that destroyed my health to try to cure it. Because yeah - that would mean not caring about what I ate, and that indeed would be foolish because it never worked for 25 years!

I applaud your enthusiasm and look forward to more of your plot graphs. It made me eat less rice

 

[Cirion]

I applaud your enthusiasm and look forward to more of your plot graphs. It made me eat less rice

Thanks man. Yeah, I'm actually kind of excited to get more data and make more cool plots. The engineer in me is all giddy at the thought LOL. Nerd and proud.

Starches (many of them anyway) are also really high in the fernstrom ratio which I think is part of the problem w/ starches. Amazoniac made his own plot in another thread of Fernstrom ratio of various foods. Potato is almost the highest in the list. Argh. This is probably why I wasn't doing great on my vegan experiment which consisted of a good number of potatoes a day. I am currently still eating some, but about half what I was before, and I may slowly phase them out entirely, so I can really get the fernstrom ratio as low as possible. My goal is to get it to around 0.02.

 

[lampofred]

Intuition is powerfully related to thyroid function...high GABA/CO2, low serotonin.

 

[Captain_Coconut]

The only digestive stress occurs when you eat bad foods like pufa, starch, tryptophan. Fruit and sugars are rapidly and easily digested and do not cause digestive distress typically. On a per calorie basis, the former list of foods are significantly more distressing to your body even with way less calories. Also, nothing is more stressful than your cells being in depleted energy state. Again, calories are a HIGHLY simplistic way of looking at how things function in the body. Why is everyone obsessed with calories? Tomorrow I will post my calories plot and hopefully put this dead horse to rest. I guess I should have expected such a hot topic as calories to spur a lot of debate though but I suppose I'm not surprised. I would agree that someone healthy probably wouldn't need as many calories though because they are highly insulin sensitive and mostly replete of nutrients, and have a positive hormonal environment. However, you absolutely can and should and need to eat more calories when you're sick. Your body gives you an increased appetite because it needs the food! Again, because when you're insulin resistant, it takes more carbs compared to someone healthy to keep glucose stores up. If you don't keep glucose stores up, you will continue to burn FFA's/PUFA's, and continue to be insulin resistant even in a "calorie deficit" and is not the correct way to restore health and it is this fat-burning mode that increases estrogen/stress/serotonin and makes it very difficult to continue to lose weight and regain insulin sensitivity even in a "calorie deficit" and the metabolism quickly dials down as appropriate and if you are extremely full of PUFA (someone obese) this can quickly overwhelm your body to a significant degree, such as being now able to maintain on 700 calories like the woman RP mentions. That's an extreme case to be sure, but eventually I myself got to a point of maintaining on 1,500 calories a day as a male (insanely low considering my activity level, probably equal to 1,000 or less sedentary) when I did a harsh cut one time. The one and only "calorie deficit" that is truly healthy to be in, is one that allows you to keep glucose stores topped off at all times, always avoid the stress response resulting from such, and minimizing/mitigating the effects of FFA's/PUFA's in your bloodstream at all times. This isn't possible while forcefully counting calories and can only be achieved while eating the correct foods and eating these foods to appetite and enough so that you don't wake up repeatedly at night (Every time you wake up at night means you are starting to burn PUFA's/FFA's). Now I agree an endless appetite should start to improve over time as you heal. But you won't heal until you remove offending foods (PUFA,tryptophan,etc) and so this can be why you might get an "insatiable appetite" that never ends ever like for me. I kept adding grievances to my body by eating offensive foods so I was never able to restore cellular energy appropriately to my system, so my body kept crying out for energy but just wasn't getting it, due to the interference from the poor choice of foods like dairy.

Constantly digesting food is stressful on the body in that energy gets shunted away from other functions needed for good health, this is why people who fast responsibly see faster healing... e.g. wound repair, or cognitive and mental health benefits. Autophagy to a degree is very healthy, eating around the clock prevents this from happening, particularly protein heavy meals will prevent autophagy. If one is in a state where their body needs repair, e.g. metabolically diseased (obese), autophagy is going to speed up the repair. This is largely why the Kempner diet worked so well, a very low protein diet promotes autophagy nearly as well as fasting does. Haidut has posted on this before as well. Keeping the organs constantly working on processing food prevents them from working on healing. Further, when we sleep and melatonin lowers our body temperature, and our parasympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, wound repair takes place. Without real sleep, where the body temperature drops, where the circadian rhythm is functioning - one stays in a constant pro-oxidant state, perpetuating chronic inflammation. Obesity and poor sleep are joined at the hip. Eating to the extent that your body is always working on digestion, and pushing your body to be at 98.6 upon waking is working against healing. Needing 4000 calories to feel normal while being sedentary means your body is inefficient at assimilating what it needs, therefore something is in need of repair.

I have read on this forum before of people who read some RP hogwash about melatonin being a stress hormone that makes you fat, and people deciding to sleep with blue lights on at all times to prevent melatonin, this is one of the worst things a person could do to achieve any healing.

Melatonin Increases Brown Adipose Tissue Volume and Activity in Patients With Melatonin Deficiency: A Proof-of-Concept Study. - PubMed - NCBI


Melatonin reduces intramuscular fat deposition by promoting lipolysis and increasing mitochondrial function. - PubMed - NCBI

BTW, melatonin lowers free fatty acids. Which kind of goes against your shpeel about restricting calories raising ffa and causing all kinds of bad things, when people fast / melatonin rises. When we get real sleep we are in a fasted state and thankfully have healthy melatonin levels which keep ffa down.

The protective effect of melatonin on smoke-induced vascular injury in rats and humans: a randomized controlled trial. - PubMed - NCBI

The role of melatonin in diabetes: therapeutic implications. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[redsun]

Constantly digesting food is stressful on the body in that energy gets shunted away from other functions needed for good health, this is why people who fast responsibly see faster healing... e.g. wound repair, or cognitive and mental health benefits. Autophagy to a degree is very healthy, eating around the clock prevents this from happening, particularly protein heavy meals will do this. If one is in a state where their body needs repair, e.g. metabolically diseased (obese), autophagy is going to speed up the repair. This is largely why the Kempner diet worked so well, a very low protein diet promotes autophagy nearly as well as fasting does, haidut has posted on this before as well. Keeping the organs constantly working on processing food prevents them from working on healing. Further, when we sleep and melatonin lowers our body temperature, and our parasympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, wound repair takes place. Without real sleep, where the body temperature drops, where the circadian rhythm is functioning - one stays in a constant pro-oxidant state, perpetuating chronic inflammation. Obesity and poor sleep are joined at the hip. Eating to the extent that your body is always working on digestion, and pushing your body to be at 98.6 upon waking is working against healing.

Melatonin Increases Brown Adipose Tissue Volume and Activity in Patients With Melatonin Deficiency: A Proof-of-Concept Study. - PubMed - NCBI


Melatonin reduces intramuscular fat deposition by promoting lipolysis and increasing mitochondrial function. - PubMed - NCBI

Its eating food that activates the parasympathetic nervous system... the PNS is primarily focused on rest, repair, digestion. Protein is needed in abundance to heal. Food restriction, especially protein restriction is stressful and activates the sympathetic pathways. If someone fasts and sees benefit its likely the avoidance of allergenic or inflammatory foods rather the avoidance of food that is benefiting them. Your body cannot heal with nothing like fasting advocators would like you to believe. Either give it protein or it uses its own(muscle tissue) and the breakdown of muscle tissue disrupts normal metabolic function especially thyroid function. Protein activates mTOR, stimulates IGF-1 and insulin, increases growth, repair, promotes anabolism, you cannot heal without good protein.

When you eat to the point where you becoming uncomfortably full and have a distended stomach, this may increase stress a bit, but even then eating food, especially protein is always anabolic and healing. I suffer very quickly if I am low on protein even by midday say 2pm.

 

[Captain_Coconut]

Its eating food that activates the parasympathetic nervous system... the PNS is primarily focused on rest, repair, digestion. Protein is needed in abundance to heal. Food restriction, especially protein restriction is stressful and activates the sympathetic pathways. If someone fasts and sees benefit its likely the avoidance of allergenic or inflammatory foods rather the avoidance of food that is benefiting them. Your body cannot heal with nothing like fasting advocators would like you to believe. Either give it protein or it uses its own(muscle tissue) and the breakdown of muscle tissue disrupts normal metabolic function especially thyroid function. Protein activates mTOR, stimulates IGF-1 and insulin, increases growth, repair, promotes anabolism, you cannot heal without good protein.

When you eat to the point where you becoming uncomfortably full and have a distended stomach, this may increase stress a bit, but even then eating food, especially protein is always anabolic and healing. I suffer very quickly if I am low on protein even by midday say 2pm.

I am not saying we should not eat, I am saying there needs to be a balance to achieve autophagy, without enough autophagy we start to age rapidly. Autophagy and age are connected. Autophagy allows our body to fully break down what is starting to break down and recycle it to something that is good as new, without that process we are left with cells in a constant state of disrepair.

“Its eating food that activates the parasympathetic nervous system... the PNS is primarily focused on rest, repair, digestion. ”

Rest, as in sleep, is without food. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say sleeping has more PNS activity than being awake and eating 4k calories.

Have you ever read about the Kempner diet?

 

[jet9]

Starch combined with fruit keeps my blood glucose better than fruit by itself, don’t know why.

What foods do you use for starch ? Potatoes ?

 

[Captain_Coconut]

Thinking eating constantly is going to fix a diseased state is analagous to thinking that increasing the water pressure in a home with leaky pipes will fix the leak. You have to turn off the water to fix the leak, otherwise your house will flood when you try to swap in new parts. Now imagine your home has many days of repair, do we want to turn it off for a whole week and try to repair everything, no because that creates other problems. We have a life to live and still want to be able to flush the toilet. We should turn it off periodically (analogous to restricting protein periodically, or intermittently fasting), and make periodic repairs until it is all better.

Autophagy is highest in children and teenagers, they have excellent digestion and assimilation. Because their pipes are clean, they go in to a fasted state overnight much faster than adults. Remember how fast wounds and injuries would heal when you were a kid? Autophagy.

 

[redsun]

I am not saying we should not eat, I am saying there needs to be a balance to achieve autophagy, without enough autophagy we start to age rapidly. Autophagy and age are connected. Autophagy allows our body to fully break down out what is starting to break down and recycle it to something that is good as new, without that process we are left with cells in a constant state of disrepair.

“Its eating food that activates the parasympathetic nervous system... the PNS is primarily focused on rest, repair, digestion. ”

Rest, as in sleep, is without food. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say sleeping has more PNS activity than being awake and eating 4k calories.

Have you ever read about the Kempner diet?

Sleep can be restorative and the PNS is active during sleep but if we are talking about sleeping with inadequate calories(low/no glycogen at the moment of onset of sleep) or protein restriction, sleep is not restorative because blood sugar will drop during sleep which spikes cortisol to mobilize protein for gluceoneogenesis. Cortisol is literally the antithesis of repair.

The kempner diet doesnt disprove anything I said and doesnt necessarily disprove Ray Peat(who advises against protein restriction). Its basically a carbohydrate only diet. Rice, fruit, juice, and sugar provide glycogen and fuel. Naturally protein is restricted, but super high carbs are also protein sparing somewhat.

The magic of the kempner diet is not the protein restriction, its that it was restricting whatever bad foods these people were eating and also likely the large shift of increased dietary fats to entirely dietary carbohydrates reducing the effects of FFAs in the blood therefore alleviating many ailments. Seems like a good weight loss program however the implications of doing this chronically beyond weight loss are bad.

Take those fruitarians you see on youtube, they are basically doing the kempner diet with only fruits. Many of them start aging rapidly and screw themselves over big time, its like watching real life humans dessicating. Protein restriction also means estrogen is not being deactivated at the rate it should be, and also the thyroid is suppressed to a significant degree despite the sugar.

What ages you more? Lack of autophagy or increased cortisol and catecholamines like noradrenaline and adrenaline and therefore chronically suppressed thyroid because of regular extended fasting/intermittently fasting daily.

 

[redsun]

Thinking eating constantly is going to fix a diseased state is analagous to thinking that increasing the water pressure in a home with leaky pipes will fix the leak. You have to turn off the water to fix the leak, otherwise your house will flood when you try to swap in new parts. Now imagine your home has many days of repair, do we want to turn it off for a whole week and try to repair everything, no because that creates other problems. We have a life to live and still want to be able to flush the toilet. We should turn it off periodically (analogous to restricting protein periodically, or intermittently fasting), and make periodic repairs until it is all better.

Autophagy is highest in children and teenagers, they have excellent digestion and assimilation. Because their pipes are clean, they go in to a fasted state overnight much faster than adults. Remember how fast wounds and injuries would heal when you were a kid? Autophagy.

Eating constantly? No but eating well timed meals daily will. Snacks if you crave it. Autophagy isnt what is healing wounds. Children also have extremely well functioning thyroids compare to adults because they havent live long enough to be damaged metabolically by their diet. Teenagers who are filled with sex steroids, anabolic hormones, and T4, especially T3 hormones(which increases in response to puberty to increase growth) because of rapid growth heal faster for that exact reason... not because of autophagy.

 

[Zigzag]

To be honest I've seen many "succesful stories" where people claimed IF/fasting/low carbs helped them with thyroid issues. How come?

 

[redsun]

To be honest I've seen many "succesful stories" where people claimed IF/fasting/low carbs helped them with thyroid issues. How come?

Good functioning thyroid(proper T3 conversion, normal T3 levels) and fasting/IF are polar opposites of each other. Anyone saying they improved their thyroid with fasting is wrong. They may feel good and energized from it, which is the euphoria caused by cortisol, noradrenaline, and adrenaline. Low carb is a bit less clear. Some that do low carb might improve their thyroid. It depends what diet they come from. A grain based typical SAD diet often is inadequate in important nutrients for the thyroid, namely the animal sourced ones the thyroid needs because most people despite being technical meat eaters eat vary little adequate quality meat.

B12, iron, zinc, selenium, tyrosine(issue if protein is low in diet), are bare essentials for thyroid and only animal foods provide these nutrients in bioavailable forms with high absorption rate and more then adequate quantities. If it is a low carb diet and doesnt restrict protein many see improvement because of the increased nutrient density and animal protein.

However the most common stories I have seen on low carb forums, paleo diet forums, is people(especially women) complaining of chronically cold hands and feet, low body temps, other hypothyroid symptoms.

 

[Beefcake]

How your gut serotonin levels might make you obese

Science is getting up to speed though with serotonin and its bad effects on health.
Obese people hade twice as much serotonin in their gut. So what you eat does indeed affect your health and not so much how many calories.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

Good functioning thyroid(proper T3 conversion, normal T3 levels) and fasting/IF are polar opposites of each other. Anyone saying they improved their thyroid with fasting is wrong. They may feel good and energized from it, which is the euphoria caused by cortisol, noradrenaline, and adrenaline. Low carb is a bit less clear. Some that do low carb might improve their thyroid. It depends what diet they come from. A grain based typical SAD diet often is inadequate in important nutrients for the thyroid, namely the animal sourced ones the thyroid needs because most people despite being technical meat eaters eat vary little adequate quality meat.

B12, iron, zinc, selenium, tyrosine(issue if protein is low in diet), are bare essentials for thyroid and only animal foods provide these nutrients in bioavailable forms with high absorption rate and more then adequate quantities. If it is a low carb diet and doesnt restrict protein many see improvement because of the increased nutrient density and animal protein.

However the most common stories I have seen on low carb forums, paleo diet forums, is people(especially women) complaining of chronically cold hands and feet, low body temps, other hypothyroid symptoms.

I agree. I think increased protein, especially in the form of easily utilizable protein from beef and chicken, is surely one of the main drivers of the "success " stories with paleo/low carb. Ray has stated that without enough protein, one will suffer from hypothyroidism. And avoidance of gluten and casein decreases things like prolactin and serotonin, both of which are not good for the metabolism. But this doesn't mean carbs are bad, it's just that avoiding bad foods is so effective that even when you ingest less carbs you still get some benefits. One would get even better if they increased carbs as well as decreased inflammatory foods.

 

[tankasnowgod]

To be honest I've seen many "succesful stories" where people claimed IF/fasting/low carbs helped them with thyroid issues. How come?

I think it can be explained by improved liver function and/or digestion, at least in the short term. I know the liver is involved in converting T4 to T3, and I think it is the primary organ that does that. IF and Fasting would both be expected to lower endotoxin and serotonin (during the fasting period). Also, most people who eat a low carb diet tend to dramatically increase protein. This extra protein could help the liver to detox, and also has a high thermic effect on its own, so temperature would be expected to rise simply by increasing protein.

 

[Captain_Coconut]

Eating constantly? No but eating well timed meals daily will. Snacks if you crave it. Autophagy isnt what is healing wounds. Children also have extremely well functioning thyroids compare to adults because they havent live long enough to be damaged metabolically by their diet. Teenagers who are filled with sex steroids, anabolic hormones, and T4, especially T3 hormones(which increases in response to puberty to increase growth) because of rapid growth heal faster for that exact reason... not because of autophagy.

Obviously other hormones are at play but it all combines to provide more autophagy during youth. Obviously high cortisol is bad. You are taking the statements I’ve made and running against them for no clear reason, it seems like you want to appear to be more authoritative. Saying autophagy is not a component to being youthful is wrong though.

Molecular functions and clinical impact of thyroid hormone-triggered autophagy in liver-related diseases

Having a healthy thyroid and having healthy autophagic response go hand in hand. Doing things like periodically restricting protein will increase metabolism and autophagy.

Constantly bombarding the kidneys with protein is not going to help with our cortisol.

Increased salivary cortisol reliably induced by a protein-rich midday meal. - PubMed - NCBI

Diet-hormone interactions: protein/carbohydrate ratio alters reciprocally the plasma levels of testosterone and cortisol and their respective binding... - PubMed - NCBI

Meal stimulation of cortisol secretion: a protein induced effect. - PubMed - NCBI

Dietary proteins and protein sources and risk of death: the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study. - PubMed - NCBI

My case is not that we should not eat protein, it is simply that taking breaks from protein is healthy. Allowing the kidneys to work on other things than filtering out excess protein, and allowing our body to recycle and repair compromised organelles. If we never allow these breaks to happen, potential kidney complications arise, causing improper elimination and toxic build up; additionally our cells build up with unusable waste that blocks the healthy flow of the cell - too much waste and the cell dies - the waste needs to be recycled.

 

[aquaman]

What foods do you use for starch ? Potatoes ?

Yes, and beetroot, squash, parsnips

 

[Captain_Coconut]

@haidut posted this a while back:

Low-protein High-carb Diet Has The Same Benefits As Caloric Restriction

 

[redsun]

Obviously other hormones are at play but it all combines to provide more autophagy during youth. Obviously high cortisol is bad. You are taking the statements I’ve made and running against them for no clear reason, it seems like you want to appear to be more authoritative. Saying autophagy is not a component to being youthful is wrong though.

Molecular functions and clinical impact of thyroid hormone-triggered autophagy in liver-related diseases

Having a healthy thyroid and having healthy autophagic response go hand in hand. Doing things like periodically restricting protein will increase metabolism and autophagy.

Constantly bombarding the kidneys with protein is not going to help with our cortisol.

Well you are advocating for fasting/IF which do significantly raise cortisol and certain harmful catecholamines and IF is something done daily. IF means a constant daily interval say 16 hours, 20 hours etc. fasted. Large interval of the day running on stress hormones. If you have good liver health you have 8 hours of glycogen storage assuming you arent exerting yourself.

Autophagy is a catabolic process, when we are talking about healing wounds/self-repair of damaged organs autophagy is needed to eliminate dead/damaged cells to make room for new cells. Autophagy is only catabolic by definition though, you need anabolic processes to actually heal. You dont need fasting of any kind to heal wounds or heal damaged organs caused by PUFA, poor diet, elevated FFAs, etc. You need anabolic pathways and healthy thyroid function that can only do their job if you are fed properly, especially carbohydrates and protein. Autophagy is the clean up crew making room for anabolism to repair everything.

Starvation-induced autophagy isn't the same thing though. Yes, damaged cells or cellular junk are preferably targeted first to be destroyed when fasting but soon after even healthy cells will get eaten up, i.e. muscle tissue. If you fast for even 2 days straight, you are losing muscle tissue because you are eating yourself. Ray Peat says you even start losing muscle tissue sooner then that, i recall him saying in one of his interviews but don't know exact timeframes. IF isnt as bad because you wont lose muscle tissue necessarily with IF but you still have the daily chronic cortisol highs + noradrenaline etc.

You also assume protein is inheritantly hard on the kidneys. There is no evidence to suggest this is the case in humans unless you have an existing kidney condition. Weightlifters pound down minimum 150g protein for even the smallest guys and even higher the bigger you are, the more muscle you have. This low protein stuff originated from vegan, plant based crowd to discourage consumption of animal protein. Ray Peat himself recommends a minimum of 80-100g protein daily for thyroid, general health, and estrogen deactivation etc...

Im not being authoritative, you said in your previous post that children enter a fasted state quicker then adults? Uh... I think you got that flipped around.

Adults enter "fasted" states quicker then children because of poor liver glycogen, leading to chronic elevated FFAs. A fasted state by default means elevated FFAs, no liver glycogen. Children as long they eat good before bed, do not end up in a fasted state when sleeping... You are not suppose to be in a fasted state when sleeping if you can help it. You erroneously believe a fasted state is where healing happens.

@haidut posted this a while back:

Low-protein High-carb Diet Has The Same Benefits As Caloric Restriction

Yeh, this is rats we are talking about here. If you are suggesting chronic protein restriction, even long term calorie restriction is beneficial for humans, there's literally no point in going with this. Of all the things to restrict the fact that our body is quite literally made of protein from head to toe is nonsensical. Humans have always consumed large quantities of animal protein in their diet when given the choice, there's a reason for that.

 

[meatbag]

"Methionine and choline are the main dietary sources of methyl donors. Restriction of methionine has many protective effects, including increased average (42%) and maximum (44%) longevity in rats (Richie, et al., 1994). Restriction of methyl donors causes demethylation of DNA (Epner, 2001). The age accelerating effect of methionine might be related to disturbing the methylation balance, inappropriately suppressing cellular activity. Besides its effect on the methyl pool, methionine inhibits thyroid function and damages mitochondria. "
-Protective CO2 and aging

" feeding animals diets with artificially restricted levels of tryptophan, methionine, cysteine, or histidine generally results in increased maximal and average lifespan. Of those amino acids, methionine is particularly hard to avoid as it is present in virtually all foods we consume on a daily basis, even if we follow a Peat-style diet. However, it looks like there is a way to achieve the same effect without actually cutting methionine intake"
-Methionine Depletion

"In support of Ray's statements that the benefits of caloric restriction may be due to the absence of specific toxic substances, this study shows that extra dietary glycine mimics lifespan extension by methionine restriction:"
-Dietary Glycine Supplementation Mimics Lifespan Extension By Dietary Methionine Restriction