Can Fat-free Diet Reduce Cortisol And Serotonin In A Long Run?

[Strongbad]

I've been doing the PUFA depletion diet for 1 month now. Only 2-4 grams of fat per day. I've read a lot of threads about cortisol and serotonin and they confuses me even more.

So straight question: if I do fat free diet for 6 months or more, will I lower cortisol and serotonin in a big way?

BTW, by fat free meaning that I consume high carbs, medium protein, and extremely low to no fat everyday. I also don't restrict calorie nor overeat. I eat until I'm full.

 

[tara]

You might get a confident straight answer from someone, but that doesn't mean they know.

I'd think there're other factors besides PUFA that can promote cortisol and serotonin, but I don't know if you are experiencing those. Eg. foods that irritate the guts directly, or exacerbate bacterial growth, or leave you short on fuel at times (depending on liver health, etc), and any other factors that may interfere with cellular energy production.

My guess is that as long as you are getting all your other nutritional needs met (including fat-solubles), and your glycogen storage can keep you going through the night, and you are not relying on foods that you personally are intolerant to, and your gut motility is moving along, and you don't release overwhelming amounts of PUFA too quickly with little SFA to protect, you might get some really good results.

I'll be interested to read how it goes for you.

 

[XPlus]

That's most likely dependent on your ability to utilise the carbs to increase metabolism.
Then, there are the other factors Tara mentioned.

 

[EIRE24]

post 109097 That's most likely dependent on your ability to utilise the carbs to increase metabolism.
Then, there are the other factors Tara mentioned.

Does the ability to utilise the carbs to increase metabolism come with time and patience or will some people not be able to do this well forever?

 

[XPlus]

post 109109

post 109097 That's most likely dependent on your ability to utilise the carbs to increase metabolism.
Then, there are the other factors Tara mentioned.

Does the ability to utilise the carbs to increase metabolism come with time and patience or will some people not be able to do this well forever?

It'll hopefully come with time and patience when fixing he things that went wrong in the first place.
Someone with excess estrogen or bad digestion - for example - might have to work on that for a while.
Different people have different issues and unless the main issues are identified it will be like shutting your eyes while shooting the sky hoping some ducks fall.

 

[EIRE24]

post 109109

post 109097 That's most likely dependent on your ability to utilise the carbs to increase metabolism.
Then, there are the other factors Tara mentioned.

Does the ability to utilise the carbs to increase metabolism come with time and patience or will some people not be able to do this well forever?

It'll hopefully come with time and patience when fixing he things that went wrong in the first place.
Someone with excess estrogen or bad digestion - for example - might have to work on that for a while.
Different people have different issues and unless the main issues are identified it will be like shutting your eyes while shooting the sky hoping some ducks fall.

That makes sense. Thanks

 

[tara]

post 109109 Does the ability to utilise the carbs to increase metabolism come with time and patience or will some people not be able to do this well forever?

I think it's been demonstated that some people can recover this. I don't think it's demonstrated that everyone can.

 

[Nicholas]

i agree with Tara and others....another factor in regulating cortisol and serotonin is your food frequency. there are also factors of life stress (mental and physical) which can disrupt or benefit regulating the hormones (i.e. regulating your blood sugar). If you've already addressed all the other pieces of the puzzle, then it makes sense to focus on pufa depletion and your general fat ratio. otherwise, trying to manipulate two hormones in isolation does not make any physiological sense.

 

[Quality]

Extreme low fat diets are sooooooooooo bad, your brain consists for a very large part out of fat.
Not to mention you need fat for hormone production.
The ratio of satured:unsatured fat is very important as well as your fat sources.

 

[lollipop]

Extreme low fat diets are sooooooooooo bad, your brain consists for a very large part out of fat.
Not to mention you need fat for hormone production.
The ratio of satured:unsatured fat is very important as well as your fat sources.

Interesting @Quality, can you explain more? To me, this seems correct intuitively and yet this topic low versus high fat is argued about in so many threads on this forum.

 

[Quality]

Well for a start everyones body needs fat soluble vitamins, it is often recommended to take daily vitamin d dose with the biggest meal of the day ( dinner usually ) for a good reason as it usually contains the most fat.
Im neither a fan of low fat or low carb diets, personally I stick to 30/30/40 ratio of carb/protein/fat - its all about balance in my opinion.
Choosing good fats such as oliveoil, coconutoil, fat fish twice a week, nuts is important to maintain a healthy HDL:LDL and TOTAL CHOLESTROL:HDL ratio.
It is also important to have a good ratio between satured:unsatured, this is strongly correlated with total testosterone levels in men.

People should set their carb intake according to their daily activities, eating a high carb meal and watching tv for half a day obviously raises insulin giving your body signs to store fat for possible future use.


Focus should be on glycemicload/glycemic index:
Actually, You Don't Need Carbohydrates for Energy


Effects of Low-Carbohydrate and Low-Fat Diets: A Randomized Trial
Conclusion taken from article:
The low-carbohydrate diet was more effective for weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor reduction than the low-fat diet. Restricting carbohydrate may be an option for persons seeking to lose weight and reduce cardiovascular risk factors.

Personally I also do not eat anything 3 hours before sleep.
Only thing I take before sleep is magnesium biglycinate and a cup of chamomile tea.

Long story short, people are not made for the abundance of food available in modern society, it makes us lazy, people should respect food.
More and more research is showing up that insulin sensitivy/leptin sensitivity is a very important to stay healthy.
Fasting every now and then like once a week has been shown to have both benefits.

 

[lollipop]

Well for a start everyones body needs fat soluble vitamins, it is often recommended to take daily vitamin d dose with the biggest meal of the day ( dinner usually ) for a good reason as it usually contains the most fat.
Im neither a fan of low fat or low carb diets, personally I stick to 30/30/40 ratio of carb/protein/fat - its all about balance in my opinion.
Choosing good fats such as oliveoil, coconutoil, fat fish twice a week, nuts is important to maintain a healthy HDL:LDL and TOTAL CHOLESTROL:HDL ratio.
It is also important to have a good ratio between satured:unsatured, this is strongly correlated with total testosterone levels in men.

People should set their carb intake according to their daily activities, eating a high carb meal and watching tv for half a day obviously raises insulin giving your body signs to store fat for possible future use.


Focus should be on glycemicload/glycemic index:
Actually, You Don't Need Carbohydrates for Energy


Effects of Low-Carbohydrate and Low-Fat Diets: A Randomized Trial
Conclusion taken from article:
The low-carbohydrate diet was more effective for weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor reduction than the low-fat diet. Restricting carbohydrate may be an option for persons seeking to lose weight and reduce cardiovascular risk factors.

Personally I also do not eat anything 3 hours before sleep.
Only thing I take before sleep is magnesium biglycinate and a cup of chamomile tea.

Long story short, people are not made for the abundance of food available in modern society, it makes us lazy, people should respect food.
More and more research is showing up that insulin sensitivy/leptin sensitivity is a very important to stay healthy.
Fasting every now and then like once a week has been shown to have both benefits.

Thank you for your detailed reply and taking the time. Some of these are not Peat friendly - the nuts and low carb. But I think you make a good point about balance and activity. Measure your intake needs in relation to activity. I remember Tara posting a good calculator to carefully assess expenditure and this determine caloric needs...

 

[Quality]

Eventhough Peat has alot of good points regarding diets please keep in mind that there is no one-size fits all for diets. Everyone is unique.

Different body types (endo/meso/ectomorphs), genetic differences among people, ability to cope with being on a certain diet (a stressed mind obviously ramps up cortisol).
Regarding the health of the topic starter, please do not use yourself as a guineapig and if you do choose to continue with your diet please let your fasting glucose and insulin sensitivity markers get drawn once ever 2months.

Some small trial and error obviously never hurts.

 

[lollipop]

Eventhough Peat has alot of good points regarding diets please keep in mind that there is no one-size fits all for diets. Everyone is unique.

Different body types (endo/meso/ectomorphs), genetic differences among people, ability to cope with being on a certain diet (a stressed mind obviously ramps up cortisol).
Regarding the health of the topic starter, please do not use yourself as a guineapig and if you do choose to continue with your diet please let your fasting glucose and insulin sensitivity markers get drawn once ever 2months.

Some small trial and error obviously never hurts.

This seems like sage and balanced advice @Quality! Thank you again

 

[jyb]

Eventhough Peat has alot of good points regarding diets please keep in mind that there is no one-size fits all for diets. Everyone is unique.

Different body types (endo/meso/ectomorphs), genetic differences among people, ability to cope with being on a certain diet (a stressed mind obviously ramps up cortisol).
Regarding the health of the topic starter, please do not use yourself as a guineapig and if you do choose to continue with your diet please let your fasting glucose and insulin sensitivity markers get drawn once ever 2months.

Some small trial and error obviously never hurts.

This forum has plenty of members which have experimented with very low fat (and many other things). That's the beauty, you can look through the history and see if it worked or not for them. Work through low fat experiments on this forum and you'll discover the pain (and joy) some reported about it...

 

[Blossom]

I remember Tara posting a good calculator to carefully assess expenditure and this determine caloric needs...

Was it by chance this one?
Total energy expenditure

Aspirin For Insulin Resistance Experiment

ETA: Happy Birthday @lisaferraro

 

[Quality]

This forum has plenty of members which have experimented with very low fat (and many other things). That's the beauty, you can look through the history and see if it worked or not for them. Work through low fat experiments on this forum and you'll discover the pain (and joy) some reported about it...

Oh I do believe that people take low fat diets and probably some can have benefits short term.
It is very unlikely that it is sustainable though, so when people are starting to get health problems due to lack of fat intake, then what will these people do? Continue the diet and get diabetes?

 

[jyb]

Oh I do believe that people take low fat diets and probably some can have benefits short term.
It is very unlikely that it is sustainable though, so when people are starting to get health problems due to lack of fat intake, then what will these people do? Continue the diet and get diabetes?

The answer to your question is in the forum's history. You can see what people did and why they stopped, for those who stopped. If you ask my conclusion, I see many problems but not convinced diabetes is one of them (of course some may have developed diabetes, but the cause may not be the new diet).

 

[tyw]

Variability to carbohydrate tolerance is very large. Whether it be "Genetics" or otherwise, there are measurable differences in Insulin Sensitivity which exist, and which do not seem to be easily altered by dietary factors -- Insulin resistance is a spectrum

I think it is logical that ancestral high carbohydrate consumption skews carbohydrate tolerance upwards, and that people descended from these populations do better with very low fat diets.

If you check Denise Minger's "In Defence of Low Fat, Part 1" article, there are clearly examples of peoples who subsist on very low fat (<10% and some lower than 5%), and that all those peoples descend from near-equatorial region (between tropic of cancer and capricorn).

That articles also goes into therapeutic use of very low fat diets in disease, and there are cases of non-equatorial peoples using these diets for "long periods of time" (eg: a couple years in the case of Walter Kempner's Rice Diet). I view these cases as disease recovery, and often times are done with obese patients who are losing fat -- ie: they are actually "burning fat for fuel", which if they were already lean, would have to be supplied via the diet to mimic the cell substrate conditions that they were going through.

I happen to be one of those people who have been completely fine, and likely consistently healthier with a very low fat diet. My ancestry hails from the 23deg North Latitude band, so that would likely play a role.

Most people on this forum don't share that ancestry, and just like I don't do well with dairy protein, these people don't do well with very low fat.

Experiment and figure out what you need to do.

....

 

[lollipop]

Was it by chance this one?
Total energy expenditure

Aspirin For Insulin Resistance Experiment

ETA: Happy Birthday @lisaferraro

YES that is the one @Blossom - thank you

Aaaaaaawwwww...thank you for the Birthday wish - was kind of sweet learning that I share this with Ray Peat! I also share this date with my Father. Nice.