5 Days 5 Different Results - Why?

[morgan#1]

Hello Lucky,
Maybe also try different types of sugar. Today, I lowered my protein and just had for my nighttime snack, it seems I’m always grazing, a monster size bowl of finely diced heavily salted, boiled for 1 and 1/2 hours, potatoes with butter. Just trying to experiment with the way foods react in my body. I increased the sugars (1,000+ calories of gummy bears). We’ll see, it could be interesting, I think I have weak kidneys. Sometimes, under my eyes and left one in particular are a bit dark, sometimes not. I think my kidneys are being overtaxed. I gather too much protein is taxing for the kidney because of ammonia output. The potatoes have keto acids, and Peat says that, no quoting but I think I’ve got the hang of it: ketos remove ammonia so it’s an experiment in progress. So I am going to the gym tomorrow and I made somewhat of a shift in my diet. I want to see how I feel when I wake up from having just 75g protein (I usually get to 11o-140), with a lot of potato protein, the lack of ammonia (hopefully) in my system, and increasing the sugar carbs. I wonder if I’ll have more energy or less, and endurance, will I be strong throughout. It’s kind of fun to play with my diet, I need to remember to track what I’m doing, or else if I hit a goal mine, I won’t be able to recreate it! Try the fructose, I didn’t realise Peat recommends for increasing metabolism, among other pluses for it.

This is from his writings,

Phosphate Activation and Aging:

While fructose lowers intracellular phosphate, it also lowers the amount that the intestine absorbs from food (Kirchner, et al.,2008), and the Milne-Nielsen study suggests that it increases phosphate loss through the kidneys. The "anti-aging" protein, klotho, increases the ability of the kidneys to excrete phosphate (Dërmaku-Sopjani, et al., 2011), and like fructose, it supports energy production and maintains thermogenesis (Mori, et al., 2000).



Don’t give up...like at the gym, motivation is primary.

Ps. Those shoulders and pecs, for me it was upside down push ups, every chance I get, do them randomly, in between sets of other things. Like pull-ups, occupy your time, while your waiting for the muscle that your doing sets in, rests.

 

[morgan#1]

Also, what have you got to lose in cramming yourself with 4,000cal? You probably would a feel fuller than usual, but not necessarily, there’s different ways to do that, as you know. It could be a horrible experiment gone wrong, but maybe it is the shift your body is craving? At least you’d be giving it all you have.

And maybe you are holding up your progress by going to the gym? I dunno, I believe that getting your blood pumping in the right context is great. But it’s subjective, only you know if the context is right

And maybe if you’re doing everything you can, take it easy on yourself, and not get stressed about your pulse and temperature, just give yourself a breather for a few days. You’re here, and I believe there’s nowhere to go but up. Those are just my thoughts, hopefully it will click for you. I find that when I don’t try to be the conductor of my life and let it flow, things do happen.

 

[Luckytype]

Update: been teetering on about 45-50% more calories, uptik in carbs. Feeding roughly every 90 minutes less.

Average daytime temps are consistently lower the past week. I struggle to get to 36.5 lately.

Definitely expected to be actually warmer when in fact im colder.

 

[TheDrumGuy]

Update: been teetering on about 45-50% more calories, uptik in carbs. Feeding roughly every 90 minutes less.

Average daytime temps are consistently lower the past week. I struggle to get to 36.5 lately.

Definitely expected to be actually warmer when in fact im colder.

What were your daytime temps like before? Do you feel colder (like you need to wear more clothes)? Are your hands and feet colder? How do you feel in general? Any weight changes? It's possible you've been running on stress hormones this whole time and now with a lot of food you're suppressing stress hormones and seeing your true metabolism. If this is the case your metabolism is pretty low with daytime temps of 97.7, and you definitely need to ease up at the gym. You don't need to quit altogether, but you're just never gonna recover until you ease up enough, and it could take months to a year or more to get back to normal.

Under eating and Overtraining - CrossFit Discussion Board

Here's someone who went through something similar, read through all his posts carefully. His testosterone was low from overtraining. Notice how he improves his symptoms and gets his T up from 150 to 360 by staying out of the gym and eating a lot of food. At one point he tries to get back in the gym, then wonders why all his low T symptoms come back lol. You may just need to quit the gym. Maybe do some very light stuff like pushups and lunges to stay physically active, but stay far away from failure. Eg if you can do 80 pushups, stay under 50.

It's a fine balance because eating this much food you can gain a lot of weight fast. I'm not sure what the correct approach is TBH. I'm trying to get myself out of a similar situation.

 

[Luckytype]

I took a six month break of no gym, back in Jan. From mid julyish ive been only 2 days week for an hour of work(plus some warming up). I naturally quite imbalanced so much that it makes things ache when im deconditioned.

Its weird, when i was ramping up to this amount of food, i was a bit warmer.

Oddlybthing is my hands aee starting to feel warmer, feet i thought so too but they are still cold. And for what its worth ive allllllways had cold extremities.

What surprises me is I do start to feel warmer at times, i take the temp expecting it to be warmish - nope. Its winterish so im two shirts, log johns with pants, two socks and boots. If the room isnt warm, im just not warm.

Also ive noticied there are times where im CONVINCED im gonna get a good temp. Ill be home, well fed just laying down resting under blankets in room with a space heater closed off - fkn sweating. I take my temp and its like 97.6...then randomly other times im "eh" warm, i take it 98.2. There is absolutely no pattern. NONE. I eat every 60-90 min, carb and sugar with some easy digesting protein. All the "peat" nutrients are where they should be.
I just plain dont get it..

 

[TheDrumGuy]

Warmer hands is a good sign and suggests that you're finally getting stress hormones down with this much food. Body temperature always has to be interpreted in context. Eg from experience I know if my temp before breakfast is over 98.5, I have elevated stress hormones and my temps will come down after eating. Higher temps are not always good, lower temps are not always bad. We're seeing your true metabolism now.

I would also suggest tracking morning heart rate while still in bed, and morning body weight before eating or drinking anything. HR is another sign of metabolism, and I've noticed that the only thing that really gets my AM HR up is gaining weight. I graphed both of them (AM HR and bodyweight) over the past few months and they look nearly identical, going up and down together. I'm at the point where I'm a bit overweight, but I may have to bite the bullet and allow some more weight gain.

BTW how are you using the red light?

 

[TheDrumGuy]

Regarding the gym, I was away from the gym for years and despite that I still had bad reactions to lifting. I think you only start to recover when you have time off and good nutrition together. If you have bad imbalances of course don't neglect them but I would do the bare minimum to address them. Eg I would not do be doing a routine that gets you back to your former size and strength.

 

[Luckytype]

@TheDrumGuy thanks man. And thanks everyone else so far.

Im at about a third of my old volume. By that i mean like 9-10 sets for chest and for upper back, maybe 6ish for shoulders(spread out over those 2 days) and like 3 sets for arm stuff

The way my bodyweight went was 175 lean and vascular shedding cold foggy brain etc..i took the 6mo off and bw was still 175 but softer and no vascularity. Now since july ive still softened up more but im probably 185. The strange thing is my face: im blessed with lovely facial structure, pronounced cheekbones and jaw. When my body composition changed, despite my weight staying the same, people would tell me i looked "like you lost some weight dude" as if my face was drawn out. Im probably 185ish now and i feel like my face is less drawn out.

I honestly fear anymore weight gain. Im only 5,9 and my suits for work wwere tailored for an X frame. They are realllly pushing it lately.

I love leg day, i fear it abd havent done it since my off time because of the huge hormonal response.

I will keep an eye on pulse. I can recall my pulse being a little stronger and definitely a bit faster years ago(then again i was definitely stressed out).

For the red light i use it twice a day if i can remember to. I do it 5 min on my back, 5 on chest, 5 on liver area, 5 on neck. Then ive been doing maybe 1 min on my scalp. Then im doing a couple other skin experiment areas to see if the hairbgrows any faster(arm and cheek) Whenever i can if i have email to do or something ill perch it somewhere and just lay under it. No good sunlight for a while in my area for a few months so im gonna really get after this redlight thing.

Im using the abi 25watt light and dosig using the formula(not the chart though)on the redlightman site

 

[Luckytype]

Bump, no definite change just yet but it mayyy be a little harder to sleep. My hands may be a little warmer but that could be due to turning the heat on.


One thing to note - 100ish grams pro, 55-80ish fat, 400-500-600 carbs and a lot of it from fruit and honey. The remainder from potato and rice with salt all well cooked. I am gassier than i have ever been in my life. I have never been a gassy person either..its annoying but im not sure why...clearly some fermentation somewhere in my gut..

 

[EIRE24]

Bump, no definite change just yet but it mayyy be a little harder to sleep. My hands may be a little warmer but that could be due to turning the heat on.


One thing to note - 100ish grams pro, 55-80ish fat, 400-500-600 carbs and a lot of it from fruit and honey. The remainder from potato and rice with salt all well cooked. I am gassier than i have ever been in my life. I have never been a gassy person either..its annoying but im not sure why...clearly some fermentation somewhere in my gut..

Is it the addition of rice and potatoes that have caused the gas?

 

[Luckytype]

I think so? Ive always been able to eat these without issue. I cant really think of what else could be causing it

I eat the few basic same things but now its gassy.

 

[Luckytype]

Wanted to bump this.

Since posting I have been around 2700-3000 kcal a day, many sugar hitting, moderate pro and fat. No real change in temps.

After a week at calorie deficit at higher elevation for a trip(holy cow can i not deal with low 02 pressure - probably crap mito function) i decided to try another week or 6 off from the gym. Ill try no serious gym, high calories and the only exercising I will be some shoulder work and maybe the occassional 2-3 sets of rowing. Thinking of my posture here.

Something odd to note, somewhat expected. My gf and I did a small trip and hike/drive to 14000ish feet. At the top I was GASPING for air after a 20 second jog. My gf is 8 years younger than me we exercise about the same but the difference at elevation between us was STAGGERING literally and figuratively. She was basically fine. Good grief

 

[MyUsernameHere]

It's pointless to just stuff your body with excess calories (excess being defined relative to how much your body can use, not some arbitrary calculator). This is relative to your activity level, age, metabolism, etc.. If you are sedentary, then the only thing that's gonna happen with eating 3000-4000 kcal a day is that you're going to gain weight (and lots of it).

Gaining weight is the most obvious indicator that your body is not using the food you're putting in for anything useful, just storing it as fat. I gained 50 lbs just eating fruits and saturated fats with abandon some 3 years ago, and none of my symptoms or problems improved and my metabolism was as trash as ever. I lost all the weight since then, and actually feel better now, as I improved through other means.

Food - particularly excess food, is very unlikely to help. Just from my own personal experience. Be careful with people who blanket recommend someone to eat 3000-4000 kcal a day, and then tell them they're "starving" if they don't eat those amounts. A construction worker on an 8 hour shift of physical labor might easily handle 3500-4000 kcal and be lean, but do you know what would happen if he recommended his diet to a computer programmer sitting in his office all day long? I think people who give those types of recommendations just simply extrapolate based on what their body can handle, and don't consider to think that their lifestyle does not necessarily translate to others.

 

[TheDrumGuy]

It's pointless to just stuff your body with excess calories (excess being defined relative to how much your body can use, not some arbitrary calculator). This is relative to your activity level, age, metabolism, etc.. If you are sedentary, then the only thing that's gonna happen with eating 3000-4000 kcal a day is that you're going to gain weight (and lots of it).

I have to disagree here. Eating at a caloric surplus reduces hair loss for me, although it does make me gain weight. I'm basically stuck with having to choose between hair loss or eating ~3000 Cal and gaining weight. I don't think you can really say that eating at a surplus is unequivocally good or bad for someone in this state. But I do think it's worth trying a large caloric surplus for a short period to see if it 'kickstarts' the metabolism back to normal. For many people this will fail, at which point they can move on to supplements/hormones and other things.

Gaining weight is the most obvious indicator that your body is not using the food you're putting in for anything useful, just storing it as fat. I gained 50 lbs just eating fruits and saturated fats with abandon some 3 years ago, and none of my symptoms or problems improved and my metabolism was as trash as ever. I lost all the weight since then, and actually feel better now, as I improved through other means.

How did you end up improving?

@Luckytype , if you're still not seeing improvement, then maybe it's time to try something else. Here are some points that may be helpful.

I'm currently on a low dose of T4 that I've been on for a long time. In the past, before Peat, I experimented with increasing the dose. I did see improvements, but my HR started going up way too high, so I stopped. My suspicion is that stress hormones were elevated at the time due to poor nutrition, so I responded poorly (thyroid hormone increases the response to epinephrine and norepinephrine). At this point I've also settled in to ~2800 Cal, and I'm probably going to experiment with thyroid hormone again. My guess is that eating a lot of food does suppress stress hormones, which should make it easier to tolerate thyroid hormone this time around. I'll let you know how it goes.

If Peat's stuff doesn't pan out for you, there are a couple different doctors/coaches who have interesting views on overtraining and metabolism. Phil Maffetone talks about it as damage to the aerobic system (interesting given your experience at elevation), and recommends low intensity aerobic exercise and some degree of carbohydrate restriction. Personally the former never worked for me, but the latter is something I may try in the future. Here's his article on overtraining, the comments by Ivan Rivera are especially helpful for understanding Maffetone's POV.

https://philmaffetone.com/the-overtraining-syndrome/

Diane Schwarzbein talks about health and stress sort of like Peat does, although she has differing views on sugar and caffeine. She also recommends some degree carbohydrate restriction like Maffetone. These two videos outline her ideas well.





Before anyone jumps down my throat for talking about carb restriction, this is far from some keto diet level 20g per day. Eg Schwarzbein recommends like close to 150g IIRC, and Maffetone says to go by symptoms. Also, both of them talk about the importance of avoiding intense exercise. Even a few intense sets can provoke a stress response for me. I think when you talk about how much exercise you're doing in terms of sets, that's the wrong metric. Eg, Schwarzbein recommends keeping HR under 90 between sets, and Maffetone says to never go over 170-age. Personally I don't work out much anymore, but when I do I might do a 3x8 @ 25% of my old 1rm. I definitely don't go jogging. Most people don't appreciate the difference between aerobic exercise and cardio, which Maffetone talks about. Very few people can run aerobically.

 

[Luckytype]

I really appreciate the inputs from everyone. I feel like i probably need a longer reset than 6 months like last time. I was once quite in tune with my body, now its like a dissociation happened and I just cant tell what its telling me now. Happy to have objective

@TheDrumGuy what was your deciding factor in a t4 supplement vs a combo vs ndt? I know ultimately its a little gamble from person to person but im having trouble finding guidance on it.

Ive been peating for just about a yearish. Do i try something different? I do like that peating does get most nutrients in and its easy to remember the food and portions.

Im effin ready to feel better and stop this shed.

 

[TheDrumGuy]

I started taking T4 long ago before I knew anything about overtraining, Peat, etc. My TSH was at the upper limit of normal so my doctor prescribed a low dose, and it did take the edge off of many symptoms. Since then I've experimented with higher doses and it does work to make me feel even better, so I know for me it works.