Abdominal Fat Is A Phase Folliwing The End Of Calorie Restriction

[ExCarniv]

Great thread, some interesting perspectives. I have a lot of time for what @Kelj is saying having struggled with related issues myself, but do understand people’s hesitancy to an ad libitum approach after calorie restriction, especially given some intense fears over PUFA intake.

Having thought about this long and hard, I think a big issue is this...

Whether we like it or not, a lot of us have grown up and are still deeply embedded in societies/communities that, in many ways, are seen as significantly less than ideal on a health front. As such, we can’t get away from the following:

• The powerful associations we’ve built up over decades around foods/drinks we now believe ‘unhealthy’ for whatever reason(s).
• The easy access to and continued societal promotion of such foods.
• The real emotional cravings we might for something – cravings are not all because what we really want is a load of sodium, potassium etc to make up some nutritional deficiency.
• The way in which food/drink we may deem unhealthy is seen as fundamental to social rituals in communities we’re a part of – rituals that bond us and bring us together.
• The highly stressful environments most of us have to deal with on a regular basis in and out of work and the limited ways we have to realistically manage that stress. It would great at work if we could stop the stressful events from ever happening in the first place, but we can’t. Like wise, it would be great if, as soon as we got stressed, we could all get a massage, go for a nice relaxing walk in the sun, meditate for a bit, jump on the exercise machine etc. but sadly that’s not reality either. Hence the reason so many people in the real world use comfort food and drink to relieve stress.
• The limited amount of time and mental resources we have to cook and prepare all the ‘right’ foods as we believe them to be.
• The fact that our health is so much more than nutrition and that, for example, it’s greatly improved by fulfilling our social needs and wants, which feeds back into some of the above points.
• The fact that we can’t always perfectly control things such that ‘good’ foods/drinks will be available to meet our energy demands.
• Etc.

Thus, in the real world, we’re always going to be left with a horribly imperfect trade-off. Always. Why? Because we have two options:

1) Be more nutritionally focused and, depending on what information we choose to believe, dedicate ourselves to getting it ‘right’ e.g. minimising PUFA as much as humanly possible.

From this perspective our environment will always be seen as inherently dangerous/toxic – we’ll always have to be on guard to protect ourselves. We’ll have to continually control any cravings we may have and deal with a mindset that might increasingly view social situations as ‘problematic’ on some level. We'll also have to contend with negative outcomes in spite of all our efforts and, likewise, any conflicting health information that may undermine our views.

2) Be more relaxed and choose to ‘go with the flow’ of the real world more, enjoy things instead of seeing them more as a means to an end, honour our cravings, be content with lower physical expectations – expectations which, to be honest, can often be about more than simply health i.e. low self esteem and, thus, wanting to impress others.

From this perspective our environment will be seen as more playful/fun. However, we’ll have to be content with less control on the food/drink front, we’ll have to learn to quieten any health anxiety we may have because of certain information we’ve found convincing in the past etc., which will be a scary notion for some.

Which side you come down more heavily on depends on what you believe to be more important and what you think will lead to the biggest win. For those who have been significanty restricting calories, possibly because of an eating disorder, I would argue the latter may be more fruitful.

Personally, these days, I'm more heavily weighted on the side of option 2. Like Kelj I have had fabulous results from being less restrictive as I upped the calories. I might consume more PUFAs than others on this forum at times, but I’m really enjoying my food/drink again, I'm infinitely calmer and, according to my health tests, healthier than I’ve been in a long time.

Indeed, we might not like it, but regardless of what we do, we can still get ill. Moreover, some of our best memories and intuitively healthiest times are during carefree moments, when we're just enjoying what the world serves up. Whilst, for many, including myself, a more nutritional focus can too easily conjure negative beliefs about the world, increase amounts of worry etc. In particular, it can too easily end up feeding perfectionist traits when, as I said earlier, real life is an imperfect trade-off – one that will always sorely disappoint the idealistic pursuit.

Interesting post, for me is a mix of 1 and 2.

I'm a bit relaxed lately, and not stressing about foods in general, but I'm aware of what could harm me like deep fried foods, nuts and seeds, raw vegetables, iron fortified foods, chips, cookies, commercial breads and high processed foods in general and I try to avoid them as much as possible without being orthorexic.

I'm towards eating foods that I enjoy and digest well and gives me energy, not obsessing about gorging 2 liters of orange juice and milk anymore that's not natural.

I'm enjoying a good steak with mashed potatoes, a fish or shrimp with rice and sauteed vegetables, a coffee with milk and a egg/banana pancake, some fruits and cheese, soups (meat stews, chicken broth w mushrooms), scrambled eggs etc.

It's all about eat nutritious foods that you enjoy and gives you energy.

 

[Hildy]

I'm feeling way better going to sleep earlier and get at least 7-8h of sleep some days of consistent sleeping and I feel leaner too, so that thing of burning fat during sleep/rest is probably true.

Me too. I feel way better if I go to bed at a decent hour. I think this much more important for our health than we realise.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

If cities are so toxic, why are city dwellers leaner and healthier, on average, than people in suburban and rural areas?

Where did you read that? The only thing I could find about that was an article saying that obesity is a little more prevalent in the country side, but not by much. There was no mention of people being healthier when living in cities.

Well, not all people on rural areas live in an environment that is much less toxic than the one people in cities live in. For people who grow a lot of corn or soybeans, pesticides are surely going to damage the people who live on the land, as well as people whose lands are near the area where the pesticide was applied.

Also, managing a land can be really stressful, especially of you're growing plant foods, since a change in weather can ruin your profit and efforts.

Finally, not all farmers eat a traditional diet. Those who grow grains or legumes are more likely to eat more of those, which are obesogenic. If they raise chickens with corn and soy and eat their fat, they will suffer similar consequences. Also, lack of time makes them rely on junk food, so their diet is many times worse than people in cities.

Why Many Farmers Eat Like Crap

 

[Vinny]

Where did you read that? The only thing I could find about that was an article saying that obesity is a little more prevalent in the country side, but not by much. There was no mention of people being healthier when living in cities.

Well, not all people on rural areas live in an environment that is much less toxic than the one people in cities live in. For people who grow a lot of corn or soybeans, pesticides are surely going to damage the people who live on the land, as well as people whose lands are near the area where the pesticide was applied.

Also, managing a land can be really stressful, especially of you're growing plant foods, since a change in weather can ruin your profit and efforts.

Finally, not all farmers eat a traditional diet. Those who grow grains or legumes are more likely to eat more of those, which are obesogenic. If they raise chickens with corn and soy and eat their fat, they will suffer similar consequences. Also, lack of time makes them rely on junk food, so their diet is many times worse than people in cities.

Why Many Farmers Eat Like Crap

In my home country, the lifespan of rural dwellers is LESS than the ones in the towns.
But, 100 years ago, the picture was different.

 

[YamnayaMommy]

Here’s a New York Times article reporting on two recent large studies showing obesity rates are higher in the country than in the city, for children and adults. Obesity Rates Higher in Country Than City

If you google “obesity country versus city” you will get lots of hits for academic studies showing this trend worldwide.

But this trend should be obvious to anyone who spends anytime in cities and in rural and suburban areas. Here on the north side of Chicago, the population is divided between affluent and educated whites and poorer minorities, a bunch of which are immigrants.

It is pretty unusual to see obese white people or obese non-Hispanic minorities. The Hispanic immigrants are all pretty overweight, but not ham planet territory like you see in the suburbs and exurbs. The first generation immigrants, the east Africans and Asians, are generally not fat.

My guess is that affluence and education (ie good genes) protect the white city dwellers from bad health and obesity. And that the first generation immigrants are protected by the fact that they’re still eating according to their home country norms and not crappy first world norms. Their children, however, are fatter. The Mexicans and Central Americans—the ones with obvious Amerindian ancestry—however, are invariably short and overweight.

I don’t think the city makes whites healthy. I think smart, healthy whites migrate to the city for better jobs and cool neighborhoods. The same good genetics that makes them educated and affluent also makes them healthy and thin.

Walking everywhere instead of driving also doesn’t hurt.

When we drive to west Michigan to visit my family, we stop at gas stations and rest stops in Indiana and south Michigan. It is shocking how fat the white people are in those regions.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

Here’s a New York Times article reporting on two recent large studies showing obesity rates are higher in the country than in the city, for children and adults. Obesity Rates Higher in Country Than City

If you google “obesity country versus city” you will get lots of hits for academic studies showing this trend worldwide.

But this trend should be obvious to anyone who spends anytime in cities and in rural and suburban areas. Here on the north side of Chicago, the population is divided between affluent and educated whites and poorer minorities, a bunch of which are immigrants.

It is pretty unusual to see obese white people or obese non-Hispanic minorities. The Hispanic immigrants are all pretty overweight, but not ham planet territory like you see in the suburbs and exurbs. The first generation immigrants, the east Africans and Asians, are generally not fat.

My guess is that affluence and education (ie good genes) protect the white city dwellers from bad health and obesity. And that the first generation immigrants are protected by the fact that they’re still eating according to their home country norms and not crappy first world norms. Their children, however, are fatter. The Mexicans and Central Americans—the ones with obvious Amerindian ancestry—however, are invariably short and overweight.

I don’t think the city makes whites healthy. I think smart, healthy whites migrate to the city for better jobs and cool neighborhoods. The same good genetics that makes them educated and affluent also makes them healthy and thin.

Walking everywhere instead of driving also doesn’t hurt.

When we drive to west Michigan to visit my family, we stop at gas stations and rest stops in Indiana and south Michigan. It is shocking how fat the white people are in those regions.

Thanks for the link. It does seem like people are significantly fatter in the country.

It's interesting that you say that wealth and education has to do with genes. As far as I know, wealth has mostly to do with the family you were born in. If one's parents were politicians or doctors, for example, their children can inherit a lot of wealth, especially if some of the money was applied to things such as the stock market or real estate. Not being poor is a huge stress reliever, and, as haidut said, simply being poor can make people dumb, likely because it stimulates serotonin. Serotonin is a very powerful stimulator of ACTH, which will increase cortisol. Cortisol is a very important driver of obesity, especially central obesity, which is extremely common nowadays. If you have a lot of money, serotonin will be lower, and, as a consequence, cortisol will be lower too, therefore making people less fat. I think the education is just a proxy for wealth, so it is my opinion that education has almost nothing to do with white people being leaner. Immigrants are usually lacking in money, so it makes sense that they are fatter, for the same reasons stated above.

Of course, I think "genes" do play an important role, but the meaning that most people intend when they talk about genes is that it's random, so it's kinda like winning a lottery. Is that the meaning you had in mind? I do think that heritage of characteristics is very important, but these characteristics that people inherit from their ancestors are imprinted intentionally by the cells when they are exposed to a certain environment( food, stress, hours of sleep, fluoride, PUFA, heavy metals, radiation, etc), signifying that how one's parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. lived matters a lot and will be passed to their children, so I agree with you when you say that heritage matters regarding health or leanness, I'm just emphasizing that, in my opinion, it's the environment that guides the organism. So, that implies that it isn't the good genes that caused people to be rich and lean, it was the safety that money provides that caused them to have less stress and be leaner than poor people. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never seen much of any evidence for the genetic theory( the one commonly mentioned, that is), but I've seen quite a bit of evidence for the importance of environmental factors in determining health.

A good diet and walking are great tools to improve health, for sure.

Pretty sad observation about Michigan and Indiana.

 

[Blossom]

I highly recommend this book for anyone considering ED recovery on their own.

 

[YamnayaMommy]

Thanks for the link. It does seem like people are significantly fatter in the country.

It's interesting that you say that wealth and education has to do with genes. As far as I know, wealth has mostly to do with the family you were born in. If one's parents were politicians or doctors, for example, their children can inherit a lot of wealth, especially if some of the money was applied to things such as the stock market or real estate. Not being poor is a huge stress reliever, and, as haidut said, simply being poor can make people dumb, likely because it stimulates serotonin. Serotonin is a very powerful stimulator of ACTH, which will increase cortisol. Cortisol is a very important driver of obesity, especially central obesity, which is extremely common nowadays. If you have a lot of money, serotonin will be lower, and, as a consequence, cortisol will be lower too, therefore making people less fat. I think the education is just a proxy for wealth, so it is my opinion that education has almost nothing to do with white people being leaner. Immigrants are usually lacking in money, so it makes sense that they are fatter, for the same reasons stated above.

Of course, I think "genes" do play an important role, but the meaning that most people intend when they talk about genes is that it's random, so it's kinda like winning a lottery. Is that the meaning you had in mind? I do think that heritage of characteristics is very important, but these characteristics that people inherit from their ancestors are imprinted intentionally by the cells when they are exposed to a certain environment( food, stress, hours of sleep, fluoride, PUFA, heavy metals, radiation, etc), signifying that how one's parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. lived matters a lot and will be passed to their children, so I agree with you when you say that heritage matters regarding health or leanness, I'm just emphasizing that, in my opinion, it's the environment that guides the organism. So, that implies that it isn't the good genes that caused people to be rich and lean, it was the safety that money provides that caused them to have less stress and be leaner than poor people. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never seen much of any evidence for the genetic theory( the one commonly mentioned, that is), but I've seen quite a bit of evidence for the importance of environmental factors in determining health.

A good diet and walking are great tools to improve health, for sure.

Pretty sad observation about Michigan and Indiana.

This is not the place where I am going to persuade you that genes matter more than food and environment in determining a person’s outcomes in life, including their health outcomes. But my assumption is that genes likely account for at least 50% of variation in a given trait, and that environment matters a lot less than people commonly say it does.

By “genes” i mean genetic material that we inherit from our parents and that plays a significant, maybe dominant, role in determining our physical and behavioral characteristics. I don’t think it’s random because, as you say, it reflects the reproductive success of our ancestors going back to the primordial ooze.

There are many reasons why I favor a hereditarian view of things.

Probably the most compelling is the research based on twin studies and on adoption studies. Psychologists and animal behaviorist have been using this style of research forever, and it has shown, for many traits studied, that twins raised apart in different environments have the same ... height, I.Q., neuroticism, BMI, marriage success, etc. Or, in adoption studies, that adopted children at maturity resemble their biological parents in traits X Y and Z more than their foster parents.

Another compelling authority for hereditarian view is “wisdom of the ancients.” I have read a lot of classical and early modern European literature, and have been struck by how uniform the opinion is that lineage (parentage, pedigree, race, stirpe, family, whatever the term) plays a decisive role in determining stature, looks, intelligence, virtue, and so on. I think the shift toward hard environmentalism and blank slatism is a massive difference between pre and post enlightenment Europe.

In pre enlightenment Europe there was even a genre, the foundling genre, based on the belief that nature matters more than nurture. Princess abandoned or lost at birth, raised by poor shepherds in obscurity, but matures to be beautiful and intelligent like her biological parents, nothing like her rude and coarse foster parents. Etc.

I could go on and on with reasons and a bibliography. One really interesting economic historian at UC David, Gregory Clark, has written two books, “a farewell to alms” and “the son also rises” (a Hemingway fan obvi) that shows, in the former, that British baptism records and wills from 1200-1800 indicate a “survival of the richest” phenomenon where the prosperous farmers of England had more children than the underclass and the aristocracy. Clark theorizes that industrial revolution happened because a “bourgeois” personality—intelligence, low time preference, etc—was
Literally bred into British population.

In “the son also rises” he does a similar historical analysis of surnames and shows that sons and grandsons and great grandsons of prosperous men are also prosperous. Clark was able to discard inherited wealth as a decisive factor by showing that sons with many siblings (where family wealth was spread thin) did as well as sons without siblings who inherited more wealth.

I could literally talk about this topic for hours. It’s so fascinating. But my baby (at seven months showing personality differences from his old brother even though they share environment!) woke up

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

This is not the place where I am going to persuade you that genes matter more than food and environment in determining a person’s outcomes in life, including their health outcomes. But my assumption is that genes likely account for at least 50% of variation in a given trait, and that environment matters a lot less than people commonly say it does.

By “genes” i mean genetic material that we inherit from our parents and that plays a significant, maybe dominant, role in determining our physical and behavioral characteristics. I don’t think it’s random because, as you say, it reflects the reproductive success of our ancestors going back to the primordial ooze.

I think that genes reflect more than reproductive success though. As has been shown with cancer, genetic mutations happen after the cell turns cancerous, not before, so the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as postulated by Lamarck, has been shown to happen. So I think that natural selection isn't enough for evolution to happen. It requires intelligence from the cells and the organism, to look for ways to solve the problems of reality and pass those solutions to their offspring. Do you agree with this? You said you don't think it's random, so I guess the only other option is believing something along the lines of what I wrote above, since the only way to evolve with just natural selection is by random mutations that occur with some members of the species, making them either the same, inferior( in which case they may die), or superior( in which case they may replace the other members of the species or create another species).

There are many reasons why I favor a hereditarian view of things.

Probably the most compelling is the research based on twin studies and on adoption studies. Psychologists and animal behaviorist have been using this style of research forever, and it has shown, for many traits studied, that twins raised apart in different environments have the same ... height, I.Q., neuroticism, BMI, marriage success, etc. Or, in adoption studies, that adopted children at maturity resemble their biological parents in traits X Y and Z more than their foster parents.

But twins don't share just their genetic material, they shared the womb at the same time as each other, under the same or at least very similar circumstances. That would play a role in the characteristics you mentioned, right? Also, yes, the children of a couple of parents will look like them, due to heritage, so for sure there are certain traits( eye color, body type, ear type, nose shape, etc.) that only change if the environment is very different. There is a study in rats showing that the offspring will know the smeel of cat urine even though only their parents made the connection between the cat and the cat's urine( meaning danger to the rat). This adaptation was passed for more than 10 generations. This also proves that Lamarck was right. Also, if the twins have the same food tolerances, they may have the same cravings for food, which would contribute to similar weight and height. Do you have a particular study of this type in mind?

Another compelling authority for hereditarian view is “wisdom of the ancients.” I have read a lot of classical and early modern European literature, and have been struck by how uniform the opinion is that lineage (parentage, pedigree, race, stirpe, family, whatever the term) plays a decisive role in determining stature, looks, intelligence, virtue, and so on. I think the shift toward hard environmentalism and blank slatism is a massive difference between pre and post enlightenment Europe.

I do think the people from which a person came have a lot of influence on him/ her. But I don't see how this disproves that environment is less important than genetics. It just proves that families whose ancestors lived well are more prosperous and stronger than families whose ancestors lived in a very bad environment. Of course, I don't think that people are black slates. They have inherited a ton of adaptations from their ancestors, so it's really not a clean slate. But there is always room for change, for better or for worse. So it's like an infinite canvas, with tons of drawings on it, but also with tons of more space to drawn on. But adaptations that the cells see as useful need more effort to disappear.

Also, it's very cool that you've read a lot of literature. What are your favorite books? Literature isn't my cup of tea, but Ray has talked about it in his article about art and William Blake(Can art instruct science? William Blake as biological visionary; you may have read it already). I found this quote very interesting:
"There were philosophers, such as John Locke and David Hume, who argued that much of our knowledge is gained through the senses, and there were satirists, such as Henry Fielding, who ridiculed the supposedly divinely sanctioned class system, but Blake took a much simpler, but more radical position, in saying that “Reason isn’t the same that it will be when we know more,” and that reason is only the ratio of things that are presently known, and not the source of new knowledge. Blake kept the idea that experience is the source of knowledge, without reducing “experience” to the “senses.” Blake didn’t deny the existence of some innate ideas; he didn’t think we were born as a “blank slate,” but there is more to the mind than what we are born with. Imagination and invention and mental striving were able to generate new forms. This commitment to experience as the source of knowledge, rather than just analyzing a stock of “innate ideas,” made Blake’s world one that was oriented toward the future, toward invention and discovery, rather than to memory, established knowledge, and tradition. In its essence, it was antidogmatic."

In pre enlightenment Europe there was even a genre, the foundling genre, based on the belief that nature matters more than nurture. Princess abandoned or lost at birth, raised by poor shepherds in obscurity, but matures to be beautiful and intelligent like her biological parents, nothing like her rude and coarse foster parents. Etc.

Have you noticed how some people have narrow palates but not droopy eyes, but other people have a narrow palate as well as droopy eyes? That would be a good example of heritage of aquired characteristics. If the parents have great jaw and palate development, they will have a short, thick face, with eyes that are like a cat's. If their children doesn't properly keep their tongue on the roof of the mouth, their palate will be narrow, but they may inherit the "cat eyes". But the parents only have a good face due to mewing. This is a really good argument against the genetic theory, I think.

I could go on and on with reasons and a bibliography. One really interesting economic historian at UC David, Gregory Clark, has written two books, “a farewell to alms” and “the son also rises” (a Hemingway fan obvi) that shows, in the former, that British baptism records and wills from 1200-1800 indicate a “survival of the richest” phenomenon where the prosperous farmers of England had more children than the underclass and the aristocracy. Clark theorizes that industrial revolution happened because a “bourgeois” personality—intelligence, low time preference, etc—was
Literally bred into British population.

I don't think I have any objection regarding what you said in this paragraph. But one interesting question is: why were the farmers having more children than the poor or the aristocrats? I can't say for sure, but I would think it's because of the environment. If the environment is bad, you'll be unhealthy, and, therefore, won't reproduce well. If the environment is good, then the sex drive will be higher, the fertility will be higher as well. Also, sex drive and fertility are great signs of health, and health makes people more intelligent. With more intelligent people, I can see progress happening much more quickly.

Haidut talked about a study where it was shown that poor people aren't poor because they're dumb, they're dumb because they're poor. If rich people were put in a place if difficulty, their IQ would drop. With great ancestors, I think it would be harder to damage someone though. I think it was Broda Barnes that said that the difference between an idiot and a genius is a few grains( not grams) of thyroid.

In “the son also rises” he does a similar historical analysis of surnames and shows that sons and grandsons and great grandsons of prosperous men are also prosperous. Clark was able to discard inherited wealth as a decisive factor by showing that sons with many siblings (where family wealth was spread thin) did as well as sons without siblings who inherited more wealth.

I agree with this paragraph as well, but my doubt is the following: were the parents financially secure? If so, even if the children aren't rich( or aren't as much), they will inherit the metabolism of two people who weren't stressed. And if someone is prosperous to begin with, then they either are in a great environment, or their ancestors were.

I could literally talk about this topic for hours. It’s so fascinating. But my baby (at seven months showing personality differences from his old brother even though they share environment!) woke up

I find it very interesting too. There was one study showing that even genetically identical beings( I think the study was done with fish) are unique in their behavior, implying that uniqueness is something inherent to living creatures( and perhaps to the entire world). Best wishes to your baby!

 

[YamnayaMommy]

I think that genes reflect more than reproductive success though. As has been shown with cancer, genetic mutations happen after the cell turns cancerous, not before, so the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as postulated by Lamarck, has been shown to happen. So I think that natural selection isn't enough for evolution to happen. It requires intelligence from the cells and the organism, to look for ways to solve the problems of reality and pass those solutions to their offspring. Do you agree with this? You said you don't think it's random, so I guess the only other option is believing something along the lines of what I wrote above, since the only way to evolve with just natural selection is by random mutations that occur with some members of the species, making them either the same, inferior( in which case they may die), or superior( in which case they may replace the other members of the species or create another species).


But twins don't share just their genetic material, they shared the womb at the same time as each other, under the same or at least very similar circumstances. That would play a role in the characteristics you mentioned, right? Also, yes, the children of a couple of parents will look like them, due to heritage, so for sure there are certain traits( eye color, body type, ear type, nose shape, etc.) that only change if the environment is very different. There is a study in rats showing that the offspring will know the smeel of cat urine even though only their parents made the connection between the cat and the cat's urine( meaning danger to the rat). This adaptation was passed for more than 10 generations. This also proves that Lamarck was right. Also, if the twins have the same food tolerances, they may have the same cravings for food, which would contribute to similar weight and height. Do you have a particular study of this type in mind?


I do think the people from which a person came have a lot of influence on him/ her. But I don't see how this disproves that environment is less important than genetics. It just proves that families whose ancestors lived well are more prosperous and stronger than families whose ancestors lived in a very bad environment. Of course, I don't think that people are black slates. They have inherited a ton of adaptations from their ancestors, so it's really not a clean slate. But there is always room for change, for better or for worse. So it's like an infinite canvas, with tons of drawings on it, but also with tons of more space to drawn on. But adaptations that the cells see as useful need more effort to disappear.

Also, it's very cool that you've read a lot of literature. What are your favorite books? Literature isn't my cup of tea, but Ray has talked about it in his article about art and William Blake(Can art instruct science? William Blake as biological visionary; you may have read it already). I found this quote very interesting:
"There were philosophers, such as John Locke and David Hume, who argued that much of our knowledge is gained through the senses, and there were satirists, such as Henry Fielding, who ridiculed the supposedly divinely sanctioned class system, but Blake took a much simpler, but more radical position, in saying that “Reason isn’t the same that it will be when we know more,” and that reason is only the ratio of things that are presently known, and not the source of new knowledge. Blake kept the idea that experience is the source of knowledge, without reducing “experience” to the “senses.” Blake didn’t deny the existence of some innate ideas; he didn’t think we were born as a “blank slate,” but there is more to the mind than what we are born with. Imagination and invention and mental striving were able to generate new forms. This commitment to experience as the source of knowledge, rather than just analyzing a stock of “innate ideas,” made Blake’s world one that was oriented toward the future, toward invention and discovery, rather than to memory, established knowledge, and tradition. In its essence, it was antidogmatic."


Have you noticed how some people have narrow palates but not droopy eyes, but other people have a narrow palate as well as droopy eyes? That would be a good example of heritage of aquired characteristics. If the parents have great jaw and palate development, they will have a short, thick face, with eyes that are like a cat's. If their children doesn't properly keep their tongue on the roof of the mouth, their palate will be narrow, but they may inherit the "cat eyes". But the parents only have a good face due to mewing. This is a really good argument against the genetic theory, I think.



I don't think I have any objection regarding what you said in this paragraph. But one interesting question is: why were the farmers having more children than the poor or the aristocrats? I can't say for sure, but I would think it's because of the environment. If the environment is bad, you'll be unhealthy, and, therefore, won't reproduce well. If the environment is good, then the sex drive will be higher, the fertility will be higher as well. Also, sex drive and fertility are great signs of health, and health makes people more intelligent. With more intelligent people, I can see progress happening much more quickly.

Haidut talked about a study where it was shown that poor people aren't poor because they're dumb, they're dumb because they're poor. If rich people were put in a place if difficulty, their IQ would drop. With great ancestors, I think it would be harder to damage someone though. I think it was Broda Barnes that said that the difference between an idiot and a genius is a few grains( not grams) of thyroid.



I agree with this paragraph as well, but my doubt is the following: were the parents financially secure? If so, even if the children aren't rich( or aren't as much), they will inherit the metabolism of two people who weren't stressed. And if someone is prosperous to begin with, then they either are in a great environment, or their ancestors were.



I find it very interesting too. There was one study showing that even genetically identical beings( I think the study was done with fish) are unique in their behavior, implying that uniqueness is something inherent to living creatures( and perhaps to the entire world). Best wishes to your baby!

yeah, I heard about that rat study showing the heritability of acquired traits. Big if true!

It reminds me of the plot of heliodorus’s “aethiopica.” The black queen of Ethiopia gives birth to a white daughter and fears her black husband, suspecting cuckoldry, will kill her and her baby. She conceals the birth, and a servant brings the baby to Greece to be raised in obscurity. Later it is revealed that, during the sex that resulted in the conception of the baby, the queen had gazed on a bedroom picture of andromeda, a white goddess who was supposedly the ancestor of the Ethiopian royal family. The baby’s whiteness is finally explained according to the theory of the influence of maternal imagination—that the kid will resemble whomever the mother thinks about at conception. I think this theory persisted into modernity.

Have you read any of the twin research that tries to control for shared uterine environment by comparing dizygotic and monozygotic twins? Here’s one such study that estimates that shared uterine environment might affect some measure at an early age (like height), but these effects disappear in adolescence and adulthood. They couldn’t find any evidence that prenatal environment affected cognitive measures. The Prenatal Environment in Twin Studies: A Review on Chorionicity

My understanding (as someone with humanities degrees and a pretty unscientific mind) is that mutations in sex cells are random—and genetic influence and evolution is “random” in that sense. But culture and history and environment nonrandomly shape the genetics of a population, over time, by making some mutations successful and grow in frequency. Like the gene that allows people to digest lactose as adults. It went from being very rare in Northern Europe, like 10,000 years ago, and is now in like 100% in Scandinavia and like 60% in Southern Europe.

If Gregory Clark is right, we may find genetic variants that code for “bourgeois” personality (greater intelligence, low time preference, etc) that become more frequent in Northern Europe between 1200 and 1800. But, as I understand it, the transmission of traits from one generation to the next is not a case of intelligent cells responding to environment and passing on a “lesson” to offspring. Rather, it’s a case of people who have genes coding for greater intelligence, saving, and peacefulness (not getting killed in duels and other conflicts, a major cause of mortality for aristocrats that explains why they left fewer descendants, according to Clark) having more children than people with genes coding for stupidity, impulsiveness and violence.

Thanks for pointing me to ray peat’s essay on blake. I liked that quoted section and will have to read the whole thing. I only recently discovered RP and have only read a handful of his essays. I agree with Blake’s critique of reason and prioritizing of experience. Although nineteenth century lit is generally not my cup of tea. I’m an early modernist and, predictably, will urge you to read Shakespeare. If you want to read a play where he foregrounds reproduction, read “a winter’s tale.” It’s fantastic. Leontes is king of Sicily and begins to suspect his wife, hermione, of cuckolding him with his best friend, the king of Bohemia. The play deals with delusional male jealousy, paternity crisis, and heredity. It includes a classic foundling plot.

Ok your post made me finally look into mewing. I had no idea. And I can’t say I’ve noticed the droopy eyes and narrow palate facial characteristic, although I have not looked for them. Mews is really interesting. Although most of his best examples seem to involve adolescents whose jaws may have lengthened as they matured anyway? Have you practiced this and had results? And, more generally, have you adopted a RP diet and lifestyle with effect? I’m skeptical about this all but curious.

If thyroid supplementation raised iq, surely it would have been noticed and incorporated into public policy at this point?

There’s a lot of evidence against the theory that poverty makes people dumb, and evidence that the arrow of causality actually runs in the opposite direction. Twins raised in different socioeconomic households have the same iq at 30. Poor whites (in the lowest income quintile) score better on the SAT than blacks in the highest income quintile. the children of Dutch mothers who were pregnant during the World War II famine has the same iqs as the children in birth cohorts before and after them.

Thanks for the fun commentary!

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

yeah, I heard about that rat study showing the heritability of acquired traits. Big if true!

It reminds me of the plot of heliodorus’s “aethiopica.” The black queen of Ethiopia gives birth to a white daughter and fears her black husband, suspecting cuckoldry, will kill her and her baby. She conceals the birth, and a servant brings the baby to Greece to be raised in obscurity. Later it is revealed that, during the sex that resulted in the conception of the baby, the queen had gazed on a bedroom picture of andromeda, a white goddess who was supposedly the ancestor of the Ethiopian royal family. The baby’s whiteness is finally explained according to the theory of the influence of maternal imagination—that the kid will resemble whomever the mother thinks about at conception. I think this theory persisted into modernity.

Interesting. I had never heard that before.

Have you read any of the twin research that tries to control for shared uterine environment by comparing dizygotic and monozygotic twins? Here’s one such study that estimates that shared uterine environment might affect some measure at an early age (like height), but these effects disappear in adolescence and adulthood. They couldn’t find any evidence that prenatal environment affected cognitive measures. The Prenatal Environment in Twin Studies: A Review on Chorionicity

Thanks for the link. I hadn't read yet. This study is a review, so I would be careful with certain aspects of this type of study, since the researchers can leave out evidence that doesn't promote the view they want to promote. This is the same trick that vegan doctors use to say that cholesterol is bad and that meat causes colon cancer. Not saying every review will be like that, but it's important to be mindful of those problems regarding review results.

When I was reading this study, I highlighted some parts:
"In terms of cognitive performance, results are mixed. One study suggested that MC twins have higher rates of pathological nonverbal performance and learning disabilities (Einaudi et al. 2008), whereas other studies showed no difference in mental development indexes."

"However, if sharing a placenta makes twins more similar because of similar intrauterine environments (e.g., passive transport), then the potential bias could indeed operate in the opposite direction, leading to overestimation of genetic influences."

"...the composition of the placenta and efficiency of transport between mother and child can affect fetal development."

"When effects were found, MC twins were generally more similar on the cognitive or personality assessment than DC twins were, suggesting that for some cognitive measures heritability estimates may be overestimated when not accounting for chorionicity."

"MZ-MC twins were more discordant than MZ-DC twins for weight and BMI throughout childhood and adolescence."

"In sum, chorionicity appears to maintain an effect on twin similarity for a variety of anthropometric measures even after birth, but these effects seem to dissipate in later adolescence and adulthood."

"One reason for the mixed findings in the literature likely is the small sample sizes used to investigate these effects."

Also, after early childhood, when the influence of the environment of the womb is less significant due to the new environment that the person is experiencing out in the world, this takes over from this point on. Considering twins live in the same house, or at least in the same culture, the foods offered will be similar, so I think that equalizes the differences that were promoted during gestation.

My understanding (as someone with humanities degrees and a pretty unscientific mind) is that mutations in sex cells are random—and genetic influence and evolution is “random” in that sense. But culture and history and environment nonrandomly shape the genetics of a population, over time, by making some mutations successful and grow in frequency. Like the gene that allows people to digest lactose as adults. It went from being very rare in Northern Europe, like 10,000 years ago, and is now in like 100% in Scandinavia and like 60% in Southern Europe.

I see. That's the view that is almost unanimously taught in schools and in universities. It's the neo- darwinist view. I myself disagree with it, preferring the lamarckian view. But neo- darwinists think that everything is random, and that nothing really matters. Life is an accident without any meaning to them.

The neo- darwinist view promotes an idea of evolution that happens through death. The species is more important than the individual, which seems quite communist( not knocking it, just making a comparison). Neo- darwinism denies that the experiences of an individual can be passed to their offspring, and they deny the importance of the actual individual, by saying they're just a vessel for "genes", being controlled by them. It is also a very religious view, as this has a lot of similarity to the concepts of "fate" and "blessing", but it's much darker due to the lack of "salvation" that religion puts on the table. Learned helplessness is a common consequence of having this view.

But when I stopped to think about it, I realized how utterly unlikely it is for a random mutation to happen to a specific individual, in a specific time, in a specific place, for a specific purpose. By the time that a random mutation happens, all of the individuals of the species will have died, or you will see people who were randomly born with a pig's head or with two tails coming out of their neck. If it's random, where are all these failed mutations? There should be a ton of fossils with appearances completely deformed and meaningless, but no, evolution is relatively linear. And there is a push for people to believe this, since Lamarckism is ridiculed in schools, so the researchers could receive a lot of money by finfing these fossils and proving the neo- darwinist view.

The evidence points to small increments to every generation guided by the environment. This, however requires the idea of intelligence. It's impossible for a cell to adapt to an environment without having some form of intelligence.
Adaptive substance, creative regeneration: Mainstream science, repression, and creativity

The study about rats and cat urine show that neo- darwinists are at least not entirely correct. There another study even more conclusive that proves that Lamarck was indeed right: it was a study in which normal fish deviate from their natural environment and end up in a very dark environment( ( a dark cave, I think) for one entire generation. According to the neo- darwinists, nothing should happen, since the environment doesn't matter and their genes are the only source of information, and those are random. But what really happened was the next generation of fish lost their skin color and, amazingly, they lost their eyes! They became blind. Use or lose it. And it wasn't just one individual that became blind, almost all went the same path. How can this be random?

According to the evidence above, the best explanation for lactose tolerance in adults, in my opinion, is that their ancestors had lots of milk consistently throughout their lives, and they themselves adapted to it, and then, they passed that adaptation to their offspring. That would be in line with the rat study and the fish study I mentioned.

Of course, this doesn't mean natural selection doesn't do anything. But how are individuals going to be selected if they can't come up with ways to solve problems in the world?

If Gregory Clark is right, we may find genetic variants that code for “bourgeois” personality (greater intelligence, low time preference, etc) that become more frequent in Northern Europe between 1200 and 1800. But, as I understand it, the transmission of traits from one generation to the next is not a case of intelligent cells responding to environment and passing on a “lesson” to offspring. Rather, it’s a case of people who have genes coding for greater intelligence, saving, and peacefulness (not getting killed in duels and other conflicts, a major cause of mortality for aristocrats that explains why they left fewer descendants, according to Clark) having more children than people with genes coding for stupidity, impulsiveness and violence.

Scientists have been studying genes for over 50 years without much of any success for improving the well- being and health of people though. I would think that, with all the money and people in this field, a gene for handsomeness or smartness would have been discovered already. Same for a gene for stupidity or violence. Nobody has ever found one, as far as I know. But there studies showing that low cholesterol and high serotonin increase violence and lower intelligence. Also, there is evidence that every gene affects every other gene in an extremely connected way, so it isn't as simple as, for example, implanting a gene in someone and they will become smart.

I can totally understand that the idea of cell intelligence sounds very strange at first, but what is more unlikely: random mutations or a cell being smart?

Thanks for pointing me to ray peat’s essay on blake. I liked that quoted section and will have to read the whole thing. I only recently discovered RP and have only read a handful of his essays. I agree with Blake’s critique of reason and prioritizing of experience. Although nineteenth century lit is generally not my cup of tea. I’m an early modernist and, predictably, will urge you to read Shakespeare. If you want to read a play where he foregrounds reproduction, read “a winter’s tale.” It’s fantastic. Leontes is king of Sicily and begins to suspect his wife, hermione, of cuckolding him with his best friend, the king of Bohemia. The play deals with delusional male jealousy, paternity crisis, and heredity. It includes a classic foundling plot.

No problem. Yeah, reading his articles is the best source of this type of information. He can explain it better than I, and he obviously knows much more than I do too.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll read that play.

Ok your post made me finally look into mewing. I had no idea. And I can’t say I’ve noticed the droopy eyes and narrow palate facial characteristic, although I have not looked for them. Mews is really interesting. Although most of his best examples seem to involve adolescents whose jaws may have lengthened as they matured anyway? Have you practiced this and had results? And, more generally, have you adopted a RP diet and lifestyle with effect? I’m skeptical about this all but curious.

That's a fair argument. But there also a study in identical twins, where one got the usual orthodontic treatment, and the other one got the functional treatment. The results are pretty amazing.

(From Attention Deficit to Sleep Apnea - The Weston A. Price Foundation

twin on the left-> orthodontic treatment; twin on the right-> functional treatment

There is also the example of people who suffer severe muscle problems, including in the jaw muscles, and they develop deformed dental arches, even when adults. Stephen Hawking is an example.

I have been mewing for a little more than a year now, and I have noticed benefits: improved breathing through the nose and better posture are the main ones, but my face seems to have improved in other ways too. My eyes used to be droopier and my cheeks used to be almost completely flat. That makes the eyes look bigger in a not very attractive way. My maxilla certainly moved forward, which is very important, since a flat maxilla gives the impression of a flattened face. My nose looks smaller as well, since, as the maxilla goes forward, the nose moves upwards and looks well- sustained, it doesn't look as if it's hanging from the face. I don't plan on stopping mewing, since not only is it important for the structure of the face, but it's also quite satisfying to keep applying pressure to the roof of the mouth.

Regarding the Ray Peat diet, I did adopt many of the concepts: low PUFA intake, low starch intake, proper protein ingestion eveyday, no grains, no gluten, eating easy to digest foods, avoiding gut irritation as much as possible, keeping serotonin low, high sugar intake, etc. But my diet is actually quite different from his. I drink neither milk nor orange juice due to food sensitivities. I use way more refined sugar than Ray, and I eat much more meat than him on a daily basis. I also avoid pretty much all fibers. So, although I follow many concepts of it, I designed the best diet possible for myself, given my current circumstances, even if it doesn't tick all the boxes.. This is going to sound strange, but my diet now is basically lots of meat, some liver, and a lot of white sugar, with some vitamins and minerals supplemented. I was eating a lot of fruit before( melons and apples), but have been avoiding them for now to see how things go.

If thyroid supplementation raised iq, surely it would have been noticed and incorporated into public policy at this point?

This will sound like a conspiracy theory, but the government allows fluoride to be put in the drinking water of the population in pretty high amounts. In my state, the amount of fluoride per liter of water is about 0,7mg. Haidut posted studies showing that fluoride in the water can halve the amount of thyroid hormone in the blood by 50%. The governmental agencies tell people to drink a alot of water everyday, and the food people eat is made with this water, so I would say many people are getting a hefty dose of fluoride every single day. Also, you can't buy thyroid gland in the butcher and it was banned from being put in sausages like other internal organs. Your conclusion makes total sense if the government were there to help, but if the government isn't there to help, then the actual policy makes sense.
Fluoride In Tap Water Is One Likely Cause Of Hypothyroidism
Green Tea, Fluoride Reduce Thyroid Function By As Much As 50%

There’s a lot of evidence against the theory that poverty makes people dumb, and evidence that the arrow of causality actually runs in the opposite direction. Twins raised in different socioeconomic households have the same iq at 30. Poor whites (in the lowest income quintile) score better on the SAT than blacks in the highest income quintile. the children of Dutch mothers who were pregnant during the World War II famine has the same iqs as the children in birth cohorts before and after them.

Haidut mentioned some twin studies in underdeveloped nations showing that the one living in their home country doesn't acquire many diseases, but the twin living in the developed country does develop diseases. What makes people sick usually makes people dumb.

The evidence seems to be mixed then.

Those are very interesting assertions. Do you have the links on hand?It would important to know what the dutch moms were eating, both during as well as before and after WWII. Did the whites come from non- poor ancestors? What about the blacks, were their ancestors poor?

Thanks for the fun commentary!

No problem, reading your commentary was fun too!

 

[YamnayaMommy]

The neo-Darwinist versus lamarckian conflict is new to me. I know about both historical naturalists and their contrasting views of biological inheritance, but didn’t realize the debate was alive and well on Internet forums!

My understanding, based on scant reading of academic psychologists and geneticists, is that genes on average maybe account for 50% of variation in a given trait.

But that still leaves 50% for environment! And that’s a lot?

I guess I’m neo-Darwinist in the sense that I believe evolution through natural selection explains a great deal of history and diversity of life on earth, including human biodiversity. Most of the attitudes and beliefs you impute to neo darwinists do not resonate with me at all. My experience is that you be secular and Darwinian and still have a rich ethical life and—by forming a family and pursuing an interesting career—have a satisfying intellectual, emotional and social life.

What do you mean when you say neo Darwinism is about “death”?

How did you become a Lamarckian? Is that what ray peat is?

The Darwinian view doesn’t require genetic determinism since the expression of genes depends on environmental inputs. For example, everyone has some upward genetic threshold for intelligence, and if they have a good enough environment and education, maybe they attain it. If they get a lot of lead or heavy metals in their diet, they lose some IQ points. Maybe exposure to sunlight was necessary for the development of eyes in the generation of fish in the cave that lost their eyes.

Mutations may be random, but there is nothing random about the most crucial part, in my opinion, of biology: mate selection.

I don’t have control over my genes, but I get to control half of my kids’ genes by choosing their father. So I perpetuated genes coding for high iq, conscientiousness, athleticism, height, health, etc. by marrying a guy with those traits and having, at this point, three kids with him.

By the way, much of the great literature of the west is about picking the right mate. It is an example of nurture (culture and books) changing nature (the genetic composition of a population) by shaping mate selection.

Plus, parents convey information and experience to their kids through parenting. And that will affect their life in many ways, including the most important one, choosing a mate.

The link between Darwinism and communism is weak considering that communists all rejected Darwin and embraced social engineering and environmental conditioning. They were blank slatists. I think I even listened to an interview where haidut attributes his interest in diet and lifestyle to his soviet background in Bulgaria.

Also, Darwinism doesn’t entail speciesism as you suggest. one implication of common descent is that the religious and Cartesian distinctions between human and nonhuman species is invalid, and the anthropocentric ideology of granting rights and moral consideration to all humans while treating other species as resources for exploitation is arbitrary and messed up.

The field of genetics is still relatively young. But it already has a big impact on health and medicine. Ashkenazi jews often undergo genetic counseling before marrying to find out whether they are carriers for genetic diseases common to that population. Tay Sachs disease has greatly declined as a result of genetic screening. Polygenic scores are used to predict a person’s risk of various diseases and to devise preventative treatments accordingly. These will improve as databases grow to include non European populations (the polygenic scoring predicts well for Europeans right now but not well for other groups because they have different genetics. Study highlights need to increase diversity within genetic data sets). I haven’t followed CRISPR and don’t know what’s going on with gene editing and whether its medical application is going to do much.

But ultimately the question is not whether genetics makes peoples’ lives better but whether it correctly explains biological phenomena.

research into ancient DNA by Swedish geneticist svante paabo and American geneticist David Reich is producing fascinating insights into the history of migration and interbreeding of humans and other hominids. Reich’s high tech “grave robbing” project at Harvard has in the last ten years developed the technology to quickly analyze genomes of thousands ancient individuals and generate all sorts of interesting findings—like genetic evidence showing that the spread of pastoralist steppe culture 5,000 years ago from Russian steppe to Europe and India was a conquest and genocide, since we see a replacement of genomes of the hunter gatherer populations with genomes related to pastoralists (indo Europeans). IN his recent book (“who we are and how we got there”), he explains the value of genetics research as at this point being about knowledge that is good in its own sake but also has and will have major payoffs in medicine applications.

So am I right in understanding that you think lactose tolerance is mainly an acquired characteristic and not inherited genetically?

But the genetic mutation that allows adults to produce the lactase enzyme that improves milk digestion is well studied. You can spit into a vial and send it to 23andMe, and they will tell you if you have the genetic markers that encode lactase persistence. Interestingly, different lactose tolerant populations in the world evolved lactase persistence independently. Thus, the genetic markers for lactase persistent in Northern Europeans are different than the genetic markers for lactase persistent in the North African populations that do dairy. We know these genetic variations predispose someone to digest milk as an adult. We know these variations are inherited. We also know the genetic history of these variations, and can see in the genetic record that the variation increases in frequency, in Northern Europeans, over the last 10,000 years that they have practiced animal husbandry and have become more lactose tolerant. This is pretty solid evidence of a random genetic mutation being successful because of a new environment in which animal milk is a major source of nutrition. People with the genetic variation would have been healthier and had more surviving children than those who did not have the variation. The Wikipedia article on lactase Persistence links to all the original research. Lactase persistence - Wikipedia

It would be interesting to know whether the genetic variation for milk tolerance is still under selection. Are people who can digest dairy having more surviving offspring? I doubt that this is the case because Europeans, the most lactose tolerant group, are declining as a percentage of the worldwide population, while sub Saharan Africans, a largely lactose intolerant group, is predicted to go from 1 billion to 4 billion by 2100. Those are United Nations’ numbers.

That’s a really astonishing photo comparing the twins who had different orthodontic treatments. I realize that i have not appreciated what the shape of a jaw and cheek bones do for a person’s appearance.

Neat that mewing is working for you. but you sound young and maybe still growing? (And I do not mean inexperienced or whatever; I’m guessing you are young because you are getting some information off of YouTube and have an unusual diet that suggests living alone [really hard to do experimental diets when you eat with other people!]). How do you get calcium eating just meat and sugar, or are you not worried about it?

I keep trying to finish this reply and getting sidetracked! I’m just going to end it with a link to the totally fascinating study of how the Dutch famine impacted the lives of the babies born during it. The pregnant women were, at the height of the famine, eating less than 500 calories a day. And their children were IIRC smaller at birth and in childhood, and maybe were smaller or more obese in adulthood, but their IQs were no different than the non famine cohorts. The authors of the study reflect a lot on this unexpected finding and comment that it points to a protective factor in the genetics of intelligence to make intelligence impervious to nutritional abuse. Nutrition and Mental Performance

Okay and the SAT race gap that can’t be explained by income.
I was also curious about the family backgrounds of the rich blacks that scored no better in the SAT than the poor whites. I don’t know if it’s been studied. One possibility is that the richest blacks come by their wealth through sports or entertainment success and not through academic success. Someone else (not me!) has suggested that that the low-scoring black SAT test takers from rich families reflect all the affirmative action diversity hires in corporate American and academia, who earn mid six figures despite having comparatively weak academic qualifications. Or possibly they are blacks from poor birth mothers who have been adopted into rich while families. Or maybe it’s white privilege that helps even poor whites raised by opiate-addicted single moms in Appalachia do better on the SAT than wealthy black suburbanites.

here’s a link to the journal article analyzing SAT scores by race and income released by the college board. https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/why-ses-does-not-explain.pdf

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

“The neo-Darwinist versus lamarckian conflict is new to me. I know about both historical naturalists and their contrasting views of biological inheritance, but didn’t realize the debate was alive and well on Internet forums!

My understanding, based on scant reading of academic psychologists and geneticists, is that genes on average maybe account for 50% of variation in a given trait.

But that still leaves 50% for environment! And that’s a lot?”

I’ve never seen any concrete evidence for 50% genetic influence for traits. Where did you read that?

“I guess I’m neo-Darwinist in the sense that I believe evolution through natural selection explains a great deal of history and diversity of life on earth, including human biodiversity. Most of the attitudes and beliefs you impute to neo darwinists do not resonate with me at all. My experience is that you be secular and Darwinian and still have a rich ethical life and—by forming a family and pursuing an interesting career—have a satisfying intellectual, emotional and social life.

I think you can, but the shackles of fate are still there. Why even focus on anything if you can’t change yourself, especially regarding disease? What is the point of anything if self- improvement means zero for the species, since it will never be passed down?

Just like a christian doesn’t have to agree with everything Catholiscism preaches, a neo- darwinist doesn’t have to agree with everything that Neo- darwinism preaches.

What do you mean when you say neo Darwinism is about “death”?

When I say that, I mean that the scope is the species, not the indivudual. So, the only thing that matters, according to Neo- darwinists is the genes. And if a random mutation occurs, and it turns out to be bad, then the living creature can only die, that is, there is no possibility of healing or improving. Like being stuck to a ball- and- chain forever until death. And, if a mutation is random, then that means lots and lots of creatures dying due to bad mutations without being able to do anything, until one mutation that is good happens. But then, the creatures without good mutations will die, since they weren’t blessed. Or they will adapt to the environment, but their offspring won’t inherit the adaptation and the offspring will die. In the neo- darwinist view, self improvement is worthless to the species, the only thing good is being randomly blessed, and that out of anyone’s control.

How did you become a Lamarckian? Is that what ray peat is?

I think I never really agreed with the genetic dogma. In school, that’s what made me lose interest in biology, since the teachers were all neo- darwinists, and they never provided another view, even with the many holes in the genetic theory. Many years later, I found out about Ray, and, after I started reading his articles, many things started to make sense. Biology wasn’t a mess anymore in my head.

I think Ray agrees with both Lamarck and Darwin. It’s interesting that neo- darwinism isn’t similar to darwinism. Darwin acknowledged that his theory didn’t work without Lamarck’s. But the neo- darwinists reject the importance of the environment and the capacity of adaptation that living creatures have.

The Darwinian view doesn’t require genetic determinism since the expression of genes depends on environmental inputs. For example, everyone has some upward genetic threshold for intelligence, and if they have a good enough environment and education, maybe they attain it. If they get a lot of lead or heavy metals in their diet, they lose some IQ points. Maybe exposure to sunlight was necessary for the development of eyes in the generation of fish in the cave that lost their eyes.

The darwinian view indeed doesn't require genetic determinism, but neo- darwinism rejects most influences of the environment, especially regarding inheritance. It’s very recent the idea of “epigenetics” in neo- darwinism. It’s an idea used to keep the sand-castle up, since they can’t say it’s an adaption, although that’s exactly what it is. There have been many changes throughout the years, since there are so many holes in the theory. Darwin agreed with Lamarck though, so the problem is neo- darwinism, not darwinism. As a matter of fact, neo- darwinism is described as “ darwinism without lamarckism”.


I don’t think there is a threshold for intelligence, there is certainly a tendency to have a certain level of intelligence, but not a limit. Drinking alcohol or extreme stress can make people “dumb”. Resting and taking thyroid can improve your intelligence and reaction time.


Ray mentioned a study in chickens where an egg with a baby chicken inside was relatively close to hatching, and the researchers put a needle inside the egg( without hatching it) and pumped some glucose inside the egg. The chicken had a bigger brain when egg hacthed. How is that genetic?


Also, about the fish: exactly, light was necessary for the eyes to develop. If there is no light, there isn’t a reason to have eyes or skin pigment. But that can’t happen according to neo – darwisnts. What is the gene that mutated or got silenced? Epigenetics is just a ridiculous term. The correct term is “adaptation” and it’s driven by the environment. If genes can silenced, then that proves that genes aren’t the be -all -end –all. In addition, the rats that passed the fear of cat urine to their offspring didn’t suffer any genetic mutation. How can information be passed without genes?

Mutations may be random, but there is nothing random about the most crucial part, in my opinion, of biology: mate selection.

I don’t have control over my genes, but I get to control half of my kids’ genes by choosing their father. So I perpetuated genes coding for high iq, conscientiousness, athleticism, height, health, etc. by marrying a guy with those traits and having, at this point, three kids with him.

But how unlikely is it that a beneficial mutation will happen in the right circumstances? Also, what drives random mutations? Why is there no proof for random mutations?


Also, nothing guarantees that the good genes of a healthy man and of a healthy woman will be passed to the children. Maybe they will inherit just the bad side of the genes. Then the mate selection could end up being pointless.


This is also another reason why neo- darwinism is about the collective and not the individual: by saying that genes are set in stone, your fate cannot be changed. So if you’re sick, you have bad genes, and you may end up focusing on people healthier than you as a way to vicariously live through their good genes instead of improving yourself.

By the way, much of the great literature of the west is about picking the right mate. It is an example of nurture (culture and books) changing nature (the genetic composition of a population) by shaping mate selection.

Picking a mate is very important, I agree, but that means improving yourself is useless, so you focus on improving somebody else’s life( children) instead of your own, since it’s said to be set in stone. Also, the less genetically "blessed" will be wiped out, instead of improving themselves. It’s basically Aryanism. Instead of helping weak people get strong, they let them die and replace them with strong people.


And as the studies I mentioned indicate, nature can be changed with nurture in the same generation or in two generations, without random mutations or mate selection.

Plus, parents convey information and experience to their kids through parenting. And that will affect their life in many ways, including the most important one, choosing a mate.

Yes, I agree that parents infleunce their children, including after birth.

The link between Darwinism and communism is weak considering that communists all rejected Darwin and embraced social engineering and environmental conditioning. They were blank slatists. I think I even listened to an interview where haidut attributes his interest in diet and lifestyle to his soviet background in Bulgaria.

Neither Darwin or Lamarck promoted black slatism, but they noticed how the environment plays a huge role in evolution, and how changes are cumulative.


I was talking about lack of freedom in communism, which resonates with the lack of freedom in the neo- darwinist view( genes determine everything).


But communism also has things in common with the Lamarckian view: if survival of the fittest and competition aren’t the most important aspects of evolution, then there is room for altruism.

Also, Darwinism doesn’t entail speciesism as you suggest. one implication of common descent is that the religious and Cartesian distinctions between human and nonhuman species is invalid, and the anthropocentric ideology of granting rights and moral consideration to all humans while treating other species as resources for exploitation is arbitrary and messed up.

I don’t think I mentioned speciesism. I was talking about giving more importance for the species( be it humans, dogs, fish etc.) than for the individual( a particular person, dog, fish etc.), not about differentiating between humans and other animals.


But yes, if anything, saying that living creatures are more similar than religions say they are, then it would mean people are animals, just like lions or dogs or monkeys.

This is another interesting topic.

What do you consider animal exploitation?

The field of genetics is still relatively young. But it already has a big impact on health and medicine. Ashkenazi jews often undergo genetic counseling before marrying to find out whether they are carriers for genetic diseases common to that population. Tay Sachs disease has greatly declined as a result of genetic screening. Polygenic scores are used to predict a person’s risk of various diseases and to devise preventative treatments accordingly. These will improve as databases grow to include non European populations (the polygenic scoring predicts well for Europeans right now but not well for other groups because they have different genetics. Study highlights need to increase diversity within genetic data sets). I haven’t followed CRISPR and don’t know what’s going on with gene editing and whether its medical application is going to do much.

I wouldn’t call that a big impact. Polygenic scores, according to the link, can predict diseases even before they appear. Hum, kinda like the supposed breast cancer gene that Angelina Jolie had and got her breats removed for? The fact that genes can be silenced makes genetic screening much less valuable, and just because someone has a gene for something, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen. Genetically damaged cells can act normally if the other cells are healthy. Cancer and diabetes are related to fat metabolism, pointing to physiology( CO2, leukotrines, prostaglandins, etc.) as the most important factor. And even if they predict it, how are they gonna treat it?


About the jews, what would be the solution for when two jews want to have children, but both have the gene for a heritable disease? Not having any children?

The jews went through lots of stress in the past, which may have caused the imprinting of stress in their genes and cells. But if that’s the case, saying that it’s set in stone isn’t helpful, and it may not be true. Until environmental and metabolic strategies are tried in these people, we won’t know for sure. Also, jews, including the ashkenazi, ingest a lot of PUFA, which are terrible for the metabolism and cause disease.


And genetics isn’t a new field, it has been around for longer than 50 years, and there was a ton of money invested in it. If there was a lot to get out of it, they would have.

This link is really interesting: The failure of the genome | Jonathan Latham

Some quotes:

“We should be under no illusions, however. The likelihood that further searching might rescue the day appears slim. A much better use of that money would be to ask: if inherited genes are not to blame for our commonest illnesses, can we find out what is?”


“As the failures to find significant genes have accumulated, geneticists have remained silent.”


“The most likely explanation for why genes for common diseases have not been found is that, with few exceptions, they do not exist.”

Another interesting link: Mitochondrial Energy, Not Genetics, Underlies Health and Disease- Hormones Matter

But ultimately the question is not whether genetics makes peoples’ lives better but whether it correctly explains biological phenomena.

Well, it doesn’t. With the exception of really genetic diseases, which likely have environmental roots to begin with, it doesn’t explain much of anything else. I saw that even cloned animals can look different from their “parent”.

Also, the Human Genome Project couldn’t produce much of anything valuable after 50+ years of studying the human genome. Meanwhile, people are having success treating their own illnesses with diet and lifestyle changes. Aspirin has been shown to be extremely anti- cancer. The genetic field produced very little compared to the research showing benefits from environmental changes.

If knowing which genes do what doesn’t do much, but knowing which substances from the environment can improve your health has lots of beneficial effects, then I don’t think genetics can explain biological phenomena. And if you read Ray’s articles, you’ll realize the sheer amount of evidence that is not being adequately presented to the population.

research into ancient DNA by Swedish geneticist svante paabo and American geneticist David Reich is producing fascinating insights into the history of migration and interbreeding of humans and other hominids. Reich’s high tech “grave robbing” project at Harvard has in the last ten years developed the technology to quickly analyze genomes of thousands ancient individuals and generate all sorts of interesting findings—like genetic evidence showing that the spread of pastoralist steppe culture 5,000 years ago from Russian steppe to Europe and India was a conquest and genocide, since we see a replacement of genomes of the hunter gatherer populations with genomes related to pastoralists (indo Europeans). IN his recent book (“who we are and how we got there”), he explains the value of genetics research as at this point being about knowledge that is good in its own sake but also has and will have major payoffs in medicine applications.

Considering how corrupt medicine is: just because something is profitable, it doesn’t mean that it’s effective. Drugs for diabetes and high cholesterol are very profitable but have many side- effects.

Harvard advocates for PUFA consumption and avoidance of saturated fats, which indicates how corrupt it is.

Why Is Harvard Medical School Still Promoting Soybean Oil?

It’s pretty funny that he says that genetic research is good in its own sake.I think genetic research is mostly for entertainment, and it may be possible to analyze the genome as a pattern in order to know which people are your closest ancestors, but I think that he already knows that genetics is mostly a waste of money and time. After the Human Genome Project failure, he has to convince people that it wasn’t a total failure.

So am I right in understanding that you think lactose tolerance is mainly an acquired characteristic and not inherited genetically?

No, I think it’s both. It was acquired by a person due to drinking milk throughout their life, and the children inherited that, and the children's children inherited it, and so on. So it wouldn’t be inherited for the person who first developed it, but it would be inherited by their offspring.

But the genetic mutation that allows adults to produce the lactase enzyme that improves milk digestion is well studied. You can spit into a vial and send it to 23andMe, and they will tell you if you have the genetic markers that encode lactase persistence. Interestingly, different lactose tolerant populations in the world evolved lactase persistence independently. Thus, the genetic markers for lactase persistent in Northern Europeans are different than the genetic markers for lactase persistent in the North African populations that do dairy. We know these genetic variations predispose someone to digest milk as an adult. We know these variations are inherited. We also know the genetic history of these variations, and can see in the genetic record that the variation increases in frequency, in Northern Europeans, over the last 10,000 years that they have practiced animal husbandry and have become more lactose tolerant. This is pretty solid evidence of a random genetic mutation being successful because of a new environment in which animal milk is a major source of nutrition. People with the genetic variation would have been healthier and had more surviving children than those who did not have the variation. The Wikipedia article on lactase Persistence links to all the original research. Lactase persistence - Wikipedia

What solid evidence? There isn’t any evidence for randomness regarding the adaptation to digesting lactose. The two studies linked in wikipedia about how it isn’t environmental do not disprove at all the possibility that it is an adaptation developed and passed to the offspring. People who don’t drink milk during adulthood will pass that information to their children, and the children will tend to be lactose intolerant when adults. People who are lactose intolerant usually stay away from lactose, and don’t send any signal for the body to start producing lactase again. Those studies just stated the obvious, but neo- darwinists somehow interpret it as a negation of lamarckism.

The fact that a people in different places got the same change in ability to digest lactose points to coherent adaptation, not randomness.

Also, I didn’t say there wasn’t a gene or genes for it. I think that at some point this heritage either didn’t exist or it wasn’t active during adulthood.

It would be interesting to know whether the genetic variation for milk tolerance is still under selection. Are people who can digest dairy having more surviving offspring? I doubt that this is the case because Europeans, the most lactose tolerant group, are declining as a percentage of the worldwide population, while sub Saharan Africans, a largely lactose intolerant group, is predicted to go from 1 billion to 4 billion by 2100. Those are United Nations’ numbers.

Well, if they’re drinking low- quality milk, then I don’t expect them to be too healthy because of it. And I think evolution is always happening, since the environment is always present.

That’s a really astonishing photo comparing the twins who had different orthodontic treatments. I realize that i have not appreciated what the shape of a jaw and cheek bones do for a person’s appearance.

Neat that mewing is working for you. but you sound young and maybe still growing? (And I do not mean inexperienced or whatever; I’m guessing you are young because you are getting some information off of YouTube and have an unusual diet that suggests living alone [really hard to do experimental diets when you eat with other people!]). How do you get calcium eating just meat and sugar, or are you not worried about it?

Thanks. I’m 21 right now, so technically yes, I guess I’m still growing a little bit.


Well, I am pretty inexperienced too lol. I do recognize that I don’t know very much.


I live with my parents, but it’s not super hard to experiment with different diets here.


Yeah, I do get a lot of information from youtube. I like seeing the person while they’re speaking, I find it easier to remember the information. But studies are important, so I still read them.


I get my calcium from a supplement. I use calcium citrate currently, which Peat is against due to the citric acid, but it is working for me for now. I’m interested in trying calcium malate, which would be better, but I would have to make it at home, and malic acid isn’t cheap like citric acid. I find that ingesting enough calcium every day is really important.

I keep trying to finish this reply and getting sidetracked! I’m just going to end it with a link to the totally fascinating study of how the Dutch famine impacted the lives of the babies born during it. The pregnant women were, at the height of the famine, eating less than 500 calories a day. And their children were IIRC smaller at birth and in childhood, and maybe were smaller or more obese in adulthood, but their IQs were no different than the non famine cohorts. The authors of the study reflect a lot on this unexpected finding and comment that it points to a protective factor in the genetics of intelligence to make intelligence impervious to nutritional abuse. Nutrition and Mental Performance

Thanks for the link. Do you have the PDF of this study? I can’t access it.


I really don’t see how genes can make you immune to lack of nutrition though . Are they somehow gonna summon vitamins, minerals and calories from another dimension for the person or what? It would be interesting to know what happened to the mothers after giving birth. I think the woman's body sacrifices itself for the fetus when there isn't enough food. I’m interested in reading it anyway, although I think they may potentially be missing some important details.

There is this study showing that people born during the Dutch famine were significantly more depressed and had less quality of life. Why didn’t genes protect them against that?

Maternal exposure to the Dutch Famine before conception and during pregnancy: quality of life and depressive symptoms in adult offspring

Okay and the SAT race gap that can’t be explained by income.
I was also curious about the family backgrounds of the rich blacks that scored no better in the SAT than the poor whites. I don’t know if it’s been studied. One possibility is that the richest blacks come by their wealth through sports or entertainment success and not through academic success. Someone else (not me!) has suggested that that the low-scoring black SAT test takers from rich families reflect all the affirmative action diversity hires in corporate American and academia, who earn mid six figures despite having comparatively weak academic qualifications. Or possibly they are blacks from poor birth mothers who have been adopted into rich while families. Or maybe it’s white privilege that helps even poor whites raised by opiate-addicted single moms in Appalachia do better on the SAT than wealthy black suburbanites.

here’s a link to the journal article analyzing SAT scores by race and income released by the college board. https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/why-ses-does-not-explain.pdf

According the link: they suggest that black people are less likely to have computers, and are more prone to anxiety, which can lower their score. Also, the educational, social and cultural backgrounds are different, even when the income is the same. White people have more relatives who went to college, which can help them with money and information. Black people are more likely to be the first generation of their family to go to college too. The location of black people’s homes is of less quality, and their schools aren’t as high quality. So the article is saying that environment may be the main thing causing the differences between SAT scores of whites and blacks.

 

[Nemo]

This website:

Phases of Recovery From An Eating Disorder Part 5

The info you've provided in your posts in this thread is astonishing and extremely helpful. Thank you, Kelj.

 

[Nemo]

Curbing the appetite is the hardest part about weight loss. It is very hard to cut calories when you feel like you are starving and your stomach is rumbling.

If you read the article Kelj linked to in his opening post, you're not supposed to cut calories when you're starving and your stomach is rumbling. You're supposed to eat.

It says overweight is a sign of an energy deficit. It takes excess food to recover from an energy deficit. Eat until the energy deficit is gone and your body has healed from all the damage caused by the energy deficit.

Eventually when you've eaten enough for full recovery, your body weight and shape will drop to optimal for you.

Obviously, everyone here knows there are some extra things you can do to help the process along. Dr. Peat's entire career is about addressing energy deficits. But I don't believe Dr. Peat has ever said to restrict calories when you're hungry.

 

[Jing]

Squats are tough for me as I have no rack. I suppose I could make one. But for now I am cleaning my barbell off the floor and need to overhead press it behind my head to get into the squat position.

If you don't have a rack yet I would suggest to not do this, this is how I use to do squats because I have no rack and it caused me to have shoulder impingement, I still have the impingement and it stops me being able to do overhead press.

 

[Tilly-J]

This website:

Phases of Recovery From An Eating Disorder Part 5

has this to say about the temporary nature of abdominal fat upon the resumation of eating plentiful calories after a period of eating restriction:

"I can often identify someone on sight who is living within the neither/nor space. It is difficult to describe, but patients genuinely appear unformed—not misshapen, just lacking definition and subtle age-appropriate refinement in shape. The term we have settled on is: adult-sized toddler.

The body preferentially lays down fat around the midsection to insulate vital organs from hypothermia. 16 And unfortunately, many relapse at this point because the level of distress is high and associated with a sense that the shape they have is permanent. The face, neck, shoulders, and abdomen appear out of proportion. This is a normal and transient phase in recovery, but it is difficult to maintain enough mental and emotional distance to appreciate that the body is healing. The even redistribution of the fat around the midsection to the rest of the body occurs if you persist right to the final phase."

I can personally testify to this redistribution of fat with persistence in eating to/or above minimum calorie guidelines. I can also testify to the difficulty of maintaining mental and emotional distance to appreciate that the extra abdominal fat was a phase of healing. It is the body that chooses that phase to protect us. What happens when we try to "hack", manipulate and jerry-rig our bodies? Nothing of a permanently positive nature. Ideally, we should have never restricted calories, dropped macros, and over exercised. But, we did. The only way out of this situation we have created is to let the body go through its phases of healing, without judgement, with plenty of calories to fuel the process. It has been worth it to me and others who have had the courage to stop worrying about the temporary abdominal fat.

Mayer, Laurel, B. Timothy Walsh, Richard N. Pierson, Steven B. Heymsfield, Dympna Gallagher, Jack Wang, Michael K. Parides et al. "Body fat redistribution after weight gain in women with anorexia nervosa." The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 81, no. 6 (2005): 1286-1291.

Mayer, Laurel ES, Diane A. Klein, Elizabeth Black, Evelyn Attia, Wei Shen, Xiangling Mao, Dikoma C. Shungu et al. "Adipose tissue distribution after weight restoration and weight maintenance in women with anorexia nervosa." The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 90, no. 5 (2009): 1132-1137

Hello Kelj. I have read and re-read all your posts in this thread. I have been spending hours reading stuff on this forum for about 5 months. I have a 40-year-old history of anorexia but have faith that I can still recover. I have been struggling all my life and my anxiety has been through the roof for most of those years. I am prepared to do whatever it takes to get better because life is utterly miserable and I am beset by fear and anxiety. But I am tough and resilient, and determined too. I no longer need to be thin.

You have inspired me immensely but I am so lost with WHAT to eat, so influenced by everything I have so far read on this Forum and read in Ray Peat's articles. I am paralysed by confusion and losing health because of this. The bottom line is that I am undernourished and constantly hungry. I have severe osteoporosis, tendon and ligament injuries. peripheral neuropathy and a digestive system which is completely shot at (severe constipation, bloating, pain), histamine intolerance and oxalate issues.
I should love to speak to you, I don't know how this forum works. I have never posted anything yet and don't know if or where this message will go. I send it today because I am desperate. If you read this, thank you so much. So much knowledge on this forum but overwhelming for me who feels so vulnerable and unsure of myself and out of touch with my body's needs. Thank you again or anyone else who reads me. I am in the UK.

 

[pushkin]

Hello Kelj. I have read and re-read all your posts in this thread. I have been spending hours reading stuff on this forum for about 5 months. I have a 40-year-old history of anorexia but have faith that I can still recover. I have been struggling all my life and my anxiety has been through the roof for most of those years. I am prepared to do whatever it takes to get better because life is utterly miserable and I am beset by fear and anxiety. But I am tough and resilient, and determined too. I no longer need to be thin.

You have inspired me immensely but I am so lost with WHAT to eat, so influenced by everything I have so far read on this Forum and read in Ray Peat's articles. I am paralysed by confusion and losing health because of this. The bottom line is that I am undernourished and constantly hungry. I have severe osteoporosis, tendon and ligament injuries. peripheral neuropathy and a digestive system which is completely shot at (severe constipation, bloating, pain), histamine intolerance and oxalate issues.
I should love to speak to you, I don't know how this forum works. I have never posted anything yet and don't know if or where this message will go. I send it today because I am desperate. If you read this, thank you so much. So much knowledge on this forum but overwhelming for me who feels so vulnerable and unsure of myself and out of touch with my body's needs. Thank you again or anyone else who reads me. I am in the UK.

Hi there Tilly, I know this is slightly late, but I am replying to you in the hope that you may pick it up - I would love to know how you are doing now?

My story is the same - I was hanging around on this forum for about a year but feeling more and more desperate, getting more and more restricted with my food choices, more and more confused, spending hundreds on supplements etc. and then I came across Kelj's posts - the main one here Why It Might Be Better To Temporarily Gain Weight After Diet Improvement which I read over and over again like you.

It also made me finally face up to the fact that I have had orthorexia (with bouts of anorexia) for about 30 years. I read that post on March 10th 2022 and it has been nearly 13 months since then. In those 13 months I have been re-feeding aggressively and resting completely i.e. zero exercise. Wonderful things have happened to me. Even though I gained weight (about 12 kilos) following a peat-inspired diet, since eating according to Kelj's sources (commonly known as eating disorder recovery - it's not a 'diet') I gained another 26 kilos very rapidly. I have now stopped gaining weight even though I eat to satiety every single day and never restrict my food intake. This is never less than 2500 calories a day and at the beginning was as much as 5,000.

If you are confused about what to eat, the secret is to eat exactly what you are craving - Kelj talks more about this in her posts. And eat exactly the amount you crave. This includes every single type of food you want - the idea here is to get over your fear of certain foods by eating them. I am doing amazingly well eating whatever I choose. This doesn't mean to say I eat junk food every day but if I want a pizza or cheese burger then I always allow myself to eat it. In other words I eat completely normally.

Yes, the fear of weight gain is HUGE - in the beginning this is a very very scary process to go through but with every day that passed and with all the health benefits I gained, I came to believe that this weight gain was ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL if I was going to allow my body to heal itself - and this is the whole point; the body is totally capable of healing itself without our intervention - apart from adequate nourishment and total rest.

*Some of the healing I have done so far = completely sorted out my body temperature and pulse rate within a few weeks of starting to re-feed - all totally normal now (from in the past doing everything I could to try and raise them and not succeeding), I am now totally warm in lightweight clothes outside in the snow, menopausal symptoms disappeared, allergic responses vastly improving, food intolerances disappeared, bone health sorted - my pelvis had dislocated, my nail beds became longer - the moons showing again, digestion vastly improving, gallbladder pains disappearing, liver spots (cherry angiomas) receding, fungal infections cleared up, sleep totally restored, teeth getting very strong (they were destroyed after 6 months of taking thyroid), my eyes are going green again like they were when I was younger and I have grown 1 inch taller in height over the last 12 months.

The most important thing to say is that I am completely and overwhelmingly HAPPY. I no longer spend all my spare time researching alternative cures for my health problems, I eat whatever I want, whenever I want (absolutely no fasting allowed EVER), take zero supplements and I am no longer frightened of gaining weight at all. I spend time really loving all the food I eat, I also enjoy restaurant food; able to choose whatever I want from the menu with total freedom and am totally relaxed with the people I eat out with. My anxiety levels around food and most other things are now coming down to zero. Believe me, that feels good!

Whatever you do, please do not give up on this! You are so nearly there. It is totally possible to restore yourself back to excellent health if you trust in the process and allow your body the time it needs to heal (two years on average). It wants to bring you back to health!!! I cannot say that it has been easy, for many months I suffered with severe bloating, exhaustion, digestive issues and unwanted emotions as part of the healing process and during this time had to eat to maximum satiety every day even though sometimes it was the last thing I wanted to do. I had to get over my fear of appearing in public with an enormous and rotund abdomen (like pregnant-looking at 53 years old lol), not being able to tie my shoelaces and throwing out clothes that no longer fit me (95% of my wardrobe). All this suffering builds up amazing resilience however and if I had not learnt why these things were happening and that they were necessary as part of the healing process, I would have 100% started restricting again and been back to square one.

I would not have been able to get through the process without the help of these amazing people: Tabitha Farrar, Becky Freestone, Elisa (follow the intuition) and Kayla Rose Kotecki - all of them can be found on youtube, many of them have books and podcasts. I made sure that I watched at least one youtube video a day, especially when my morale was particularly low (it often was). I came back to this and Kelj's other posts regularly and I hope one day she may return to this forum so I can say a huge thank you to her for inspiring me and finally helping me to sort my life out.

I am so happy to say that although I am not yet completely restored, I am coming out the other side and at last I can see the light at the end of tunnel. I believe that this past year of discomfort and uncertainty will def. stand me in good stead for the rest of my life, which I hope to live balanced and free.

For other people reading this:

If you have questions about eating PUFAs etc. all of this has been covered in this and Kelj's other posts here, she has a lot of information on them:

Fat Is An Organ

Biochemistry of adipose tissue: an endocrine organ It is time we start respecting our fat. Fat cells are not a mere repository for excess energy. The above paper has this to say: "Adipose tissue is no longer considered to be an inert tissue that stores fat. This tissue is capable of expanding...

raypeatforum.com

Why It Might Be Better To Temporarily Gain Weight After Diet Improvement

I have given my experience here of incorporating many Ray Peat suggestions and generally eating enough calories. I gained weight, went through some bad symptoms, but persisted because I believed the science said those consequences were normal. I expected them. I believed the science pointed to...

raypeatforum.com

After this, there is only so much research you can do until you get to the point where you just have to take action. Once that action has been started the only other thing to do is persist until you have restored your health. It is that simple, I am really not kidding. It may seem crazy to move in completely the opposite direction from what everyone else is doing i.e. calorie restriction (often in the form of healthier eating) and more exercise but I know that people on this forum are an enlightened bunch and will generally do whatever it takes to get the results they want, even if those things seem to oppose all the hard-won knowledge they have already accrued. All I can say is that you just gotta have a little faith, take the plunge and go for it - I am SO SO very glad I did!

And don't think that because you have not come up with a label of 'orthorexic' or 'anorexic' for yourself this whole thread does not apply to you, most people at some stage in their life have restricted their food intake for whatever reason and if not their food intake, then their food choices. That is what leads to all the problems in the first place. It took me 30 years before I could admit to myself that I was indeed one of those people, please don't leave it that long !!!

I hope you are in a good place right now Tilly, much love.

 

[Lollipop2]

Hi there Tilly, I know this is slightly late, but I am replying to you in the hope that you may pick it up - I would love to know how you are doing now?

My story is the same - I was hanging around on this forum for about a year but feeling more and more desperate, getting more and more restricted with my food choices, more and more confused, spending hundreds on supplements etc. and then I came across Kelj's posts - the main one here Why It Might Be Better To Temporarily Gain Weight After Diet Improvement which I read over and over again like you.

It also made me finally face up to the fact that I have had orthorexia (with bouts of anorexia) for about 30 years. I read that post on March 10th 2022 and it has been nearly 13 months since then. In those 13 months I have been re-feeding aggressively and resting completely i.e. zero exercise. Wonderful things have happened to me. Even though I gained weight (about 12 kilos) following a peat-inspired diet, since eating according to Kelj's sources (commonly known as eating disorder recovery - it's not a 'diet') I gained another 26 kilos very rapidly. I have now stopped gaining weight even though I eat to satiety every single day and never restrict my food intake. This is never less than 2500 calories a day and at the beginning was as much as 5,000.

If you are confused about what to eat, the secret is to eat exactly what you are craving - Kelj talks more about this in her posts. And eat exactly the amount you crave. This includes every single type of food you want - the idea here is to get over your fear of certain foods by eating them. I am doing amazingly well eating whatever I choose. This doesn't mean to say I eat junk food every day but if I want a pizza or cheese burger then I always allow myself to eat it. In other words I eat completely normally.

Yes, the fear of weight gain is HUGE - in the beginning this is a very very scary process to go through but with every day that passed and with all the health benefits I gained, I came to believe that this weight gain was ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL if I was going to allow my body to heal itself - and this is the whole point; the body is totally capable of healing itself without our intervention - apart from adequate nourishment and total rest.

*Some of the healing I have done so far = completely sorted out my body temperature and pulse rate within a few weeks of starting to re-feed - all totally normal now (from in the past doing everything I could to try and raise them and not succeeding), I am now totally warm in lightweight clothes outside in the snow, menopausal symptoms disappeared, allergic responses vastly improving, food intolerances disappeared, bone health sorted - my pelvis had dislocated, my nail beds became longer - the moons showing again, digestion vastly improving, gallbladder pains disappearing, liver spots (cherry angiomas) receding, fungal infections cleared up, sleep totally restored, teeth getting very strong (they were destroyed after 6 months of taking thyroid), my eyes are going green again like they were when I was younger and I have grown 1 inch taller in height over the last 12 months.

The most important thing to say is that I am completely and overwhelmingly HAPPY. I no longer spend all my spare time researching alternative cures for my health problems, I eat whatever I want, whenever I want (absolutely no fasting allowed EVER), take zero supplements and I am no longer frightened of gaining weight at all. I spend time really loving all the food I eat, I also enjoy restaurant food; able to choose whatever I want from the menu with total freedom and am totally relaxed with the people I eat out with. My anxiety levels around food and most other things are now coming down to zero. Believe me, that feels good!

Whatever you do, please do not give up on this! You are so nearly there. It is totally possible to restore yourself back to excellent health if you trust in the process and allow your body the time it needs to heal (two years on average). It wants to bring you back to health!!! I cannot say that it has been easy, for many months I suffered with severe bloating, exhaustion, digestive issues and unwanted emotions as part of the healing process and during this time had to eat to maximum satiety every day even though sometimes it was the last thing I wanted to do. I had to get over my fear of appearing in public with an enormous and rotund abdomen (like pregnant-looking at 53 years old lol), not being able to tie my shoelaces and throwing out clothes that no longer fit me (95% of my wardrobe). All this suffering builds up amazing resilience however and if I had not learnt why these things were happening and that they were necessary as part of the healing process, I would have 100% started restricting again and been back to square one.

I would not have been able to get through the process without the help of these amazing people: Tabitha Farrar, Becky Freestone, Elisa (follow the intuition) and Kayla Rose Kotecki - all of them can be found on youtube, many of them have books and podcasts. I made sure that I watched at least one youtube video a day, especially when my morale was particularly low (it often was). I came back to this and Kelj's other posts regularly and I hope one day she may return to this forum so I can say a huge thank you to her for inspiring me and finally helping me to sort my life out.

I am so happy to say that although I am not yet completely restored, I am coming out the other side and at last I can see the light at the end of tunnel. I believe that this past year of discomfort and uncertainty will def. stand me in good stead for the rest of my life, which I hope to live balanced and free.

For other people reading this:

If you have questions about eating PUFAs etc. all of this has been covered in this and Kelj's other posts here, she has a lot of information on them:

Fat Is An Organ

Biochemistry of adipose tissue: an endocrine organ It is time we start respecting our fat. Fat cells are not a mere repository for excess energy. The above paper has this to say: "Adipose tissue is no longer considered to be an inert tissue that stores fat. This tissue is capable of expanding...

raypeatforum.com

Why It Might Be Better To Temporarily Gain Weight After Diet Improvement

I have given my experience here of incorporating many Ray Peat suggestions and generally eating enough calories. I gained weight, went through some bad symptoms, but persisted because I believed the science said those consequences were normal. I expected them. I believed the science pointed to...

raypeatforum.com

After this, there is only so much research you can do until you get to the point where you just have to take action. Once that action has been started the only other thing to do is persist until you have restored your health. It is that simple, I am really not kidding. It may seem crazy to move in completely the opposite direction from what everyone else is doing i.e. calorie restriction (often in the form of healthier eating) and more exercise but I know that people on this forum are an enlightened bunch and will generally do whatever it takes to get the results they want, even if those things seem to oppose all the hard-won knowledge they have already accrued. All I can say is that you just gotta have a little faith, take the plunge and go for it - I am SO SO very glad I did!

And don't think that because you have not come up with a label of 'orthorexic' or 'anorexic' for yourself this whole thread does not apply to you, most people at some stage in their life have restricted their food intake for whatever reason and if not their food intake, then their food choices. That is what leads to all the problems in the first place. It took me 30 years before I could admit to myself that I was indeed one of those people, please don't leave it that long !!!

I hope you are in a good place right now Tilly, much love.

What a beautiful post! Can you elaborate more on your experience of taking thyroid causing problems in your teeth? Did you take NDT or synthetic T3 and T4?

 

[pushkin]

What a beautiful post! Can you elaborate more on your experience of taking thyroid causing problems in your teeth? Did you take NDT or synthetic T3 and T4?

ah thank you! re: the thyroid, yes I took NDT from forefront health and then tyromix from idealabs, totalling about 6 months. I gave it up about two weeks into my re-feeding as I was showing all the symptoms of being hyperthyroid (I was so hot I actually couldn't bear it and had a racing heart after walking across the room). It was only after reading a thread on here that I put two and two together - Tooth Decay On RP Diets - I Think Thyroid Is The Culprit this was not the actual thread but one very similar. I had the same problems - two teeth that seemed to have disintegrated and I spent 5 hours at the dentist, he had to fill cavities at the gum line on 80% of my teeth - in the end he said he wouldn't charge me because it was so ridiculous how many fillings he had done.

Incidentally, I just remembered that when I was at the dentist that time, I had a chat with a nutritionist working at the same practice and she told me that if you test hypothyroid but are antigen negative you should not supplement with thyroid and use diet/rest to remedy the hypo situation instead. If you are antigen negative this means your body is not attacking your own thyroid (as in Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis) but you are going through a temporary dip in thyroid health which will resolve itself naturally if you give the body what it needs to heal. This may also tie in with the fact that when I tested hypo in the first place, my doctor didn't even think it was a problem.

Suffice to say *I* self-medicated with thyroid because I panicked and thought I would be able to fix the problem myself.