Kelj
Member
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2019
- Messages
- 299
Fat gain is always the response to matabolic suppression for our survival. We have purposely created those conditions, unless we've been through a period of real famine or poverty. No one is talking about eating only so-called junk food. Net energy matters when addressing an energy deficit as quickly as possible. Energy dense food, rationally, helps with that. I'm only talking about how people do, in real life, recover. I still do eat whatever I want. I have done, for some years and I became well and stay well. Never did I say to eat only a certain kind of food. Quite the opposite.I am completely on board with the not restricting calories bit, and also meeting those minimum guidelines (which I will also be the first to say is actually probably still too low for many!).
I think the argument at this point is -- especially since you and others have gotten well following an unrestricted calorie approach is this:
Can you FULLY recover (lose body fat, feel good, etc) from only "junk" and "fast foods"? I don't think so. In my experience, junk foods make me feel like junk (surprise lol).
Every success story that has occurred ultimately involved healthy foods (typically in line with RP's principles). As far as I know, this includes you also, no @Kelj ?
Correct me if wrong but this is what I have been seeing here thus far::
Sure yourself and others start off eating junkier foods (which I think is the main reason extreme weight gain occurs, but I digress) but eventually after a ton of weight gain shift to better food choices at which point the weight is lost from what I've been reading. (surprise... not really)
A lot of the weight gain, I'm saying then, is needless suffering if better food choices are made from day 1. I just really really doubt anyone is making a fully recovery while continuing to eat fast foods for almost every meal if not every meal because that flies in the face of everything RP has researched not to mention 100% (not one exception) of people I know in real life who feel better replacing processed foods with organic/grass fed etc.. Let's not forget that Ray Peat himself does things like low-fat. I guess even he is eating disordered / orthorexic by all thsi logic. In fact, as far as I am aware, he even switched to hydrogenated coconut oil recently so he could drop his PUFA intake by a mere 0.5 gram a day or so.
Sure, I can possibly get on board with saying that enough calories from processed foods is superior to insufficient calories from healthier choices, what I'm arguing for is a one to one fair comparison - same calories, but comparing healthier choices vs. processed.
If you can point me to someone that has made a full recovery (INCLUDING losing the massive weight gain), and continues to maintain a LEAN weight while eating (with no restriction, no less):
Fast foods, pizza, hot dogs, processed cakes, processed cookies, microwave dinners, PUFA filled stuff, very high fat very high carb stuff, donuts, pretzels, grain fed meat, grain fed milk/eggs, iron fortified bread / bleached flour , pufa filled chips, processed sodas and basically just lots of processed foods.
If so, THEN I'll eat my hat and admit defeat on this debate! (But I'll still retain that recovery via "cleaner" foods is still likely better). Especially since I have 6 months of tracked data that I can plot to prove my points on this matter, like PUFA.
So even so, I'm still not convinced that eating lots of calories from healthier sources is not vastly superior, even if theoretically it can be done. It's just a lot of pain that is not necessary to go through. High pufa, super high starch, high phosphorus to calcium ratio, all of these things have been scientifically proven to worsen health, so you're just shooting yourself in the foot by eating very high calorie of these type of food choices. There is a reason livestock for example is fed PUFA and starch (grain) - it RELIABLY causes weight gain on less calories. Maybe you'll recover (and I still have my doubts on that) but it's no surprise that people are gaining over 100 lbs on such an approach.
We can speculate all day long about whether eating this or that or not eating this or that can prevent the weight gain. Lots of people have tried recovery for various lengths of time still suppressing food intake and hanging onto their food fears. That never results in complete remission. Trying to prevent your fat organ from doing what is necessary to provide the hormones and enzymes it needs for recovery and wellness is going to backfire. It is how we began this thread, with an article which shows what our fat is doing for us to protect us. Again, the size of our fat organ is in proportion to how long and how much we have suppressed. No one is saying you have to eat anything you don't feel like eating. If you are completely well doing what you are doing, why would you stop doing it?