I also dislike the idea of diets based around “depletion” that takes years, be it PUFA or vitamin A. Excluding major food groups/nutr
I did PUFA depletion cold turkey for at least 4 years just for the heck of it. Didn't pay much attention to it. Just let the years go by, not even measuring anything nor anticipating anything. Easy to do when I don't eat out much except for some occasions.
One day I just decided to see how I'd take to white rice. Shifted from 15 years on brown to see if I'd get hungry 2-3 hours after meals. I wasn't hungry anymore. I skipped lunch and found I was no longer feeling empty. I took a teaspoon white sugar when I was feeling empty (hungry or sleepy) and I actually felt better, with no feeling of sugar low at any time after it.
That's when I knew PUFA depletion for 4 years works. I've even done 2-days dry fasts lately. It doesn't put me on a sugar low on the first day. On the second day, I cheated by taking a teaspoon of honey twice.
Sugar has become a friend I had long lost. Sugar never left me, I didn't deserve sugar because I unknowingly took PUFA as part of my life and my body became unfriendly to sugar.
For all the people here who goes to great lengths to defend SFAs and attack PUFAs, I am disappointed that they do not walk the talk though. If you truly believe SFAs are good, why aren't any of you taking the 4 yr PUFA depletion challenge? It might be hard to convince
@ursidae because he has his stated reasons, but my experience as documented may make you take the plunge :
Anti-Peat - Saturated Fat TERRIBLE For Liver Health & Diabetes. Compared To PUFA
Many in this forum get disappointed when they embrace the Ray Peat diet. Like
@Cirion. They gain weight and become obese. One reason is they don't have what it takes. They don't want to take the 4yr challenge. They want to take aspirin and niacinamide instead. They are not curing themselves. They're no different from people who take maintenance meds but they only replace maint meds with supplements.
This is a very nuanced topic and they need to get a good handle on it. OP is right about nuts though. They're not evil because while these nuts, as whole foods, contain vitamin E packaged together with the PUFAs nuts contain. At its worst, it's a wash because the PUFAs are balanced by the vitamin E it contains. Think about it. Coconut has a lot of SFAs, but it contains very, very insignificant amounts of vitamin E. It's not needed to be in coconuts. Ask yourself where we get our vitamin E from - it's from high PUFA sources such as soya oil. I'm not advocating for eating soya nuts though (highly estrogenic).
But when we avoid PUFAs, we want to avoid PUFAs in their isolated forms especially those the American Heart Association deems heart- healthy, such as soya oil, corn oil, and canola oil. And more of such oils. There is no vitamin E that comes with these oils. A lifestyle where you take in these oils daily, thru home cooking and especially at eating out, will be causing you sugar regulation issues. It's because of these issues that people have thyroid issues, and have problems maintaining a normal weight, and get obese.
Fix yourself by getting rid of your PUFA stores first. While nuts aren't bad, don't go consuming them while you're on a PUFA depletion for 4 years.
When you get back to having your blood sugar regulation improved, you can go back to enjoying nuts. But take them in moderation, as unsprouted nuts have plenty of nutrients, and they can be a problem for people with compromised guts.
Lastly, as PUFAs are tied very much to blood sugar issues, it's also good to understand the role of insulin. Insulin's role is not really primarily to make sugar get absorbed into tissues. This is one of the myths of modern medicine that is hard to shake off. Yes, insulin helps, but in its absence, the body's tissues will still absorb sugar, and good potassium stores will do the job. But insulin's main role is to regulate the different metabolic pathways (sugar metabolism, fatty acid oxidation, and ketogenesis) the body relies on to produce energy.
I end with sharing this recent post:
Guide On How To Optimize Glucose Oxidation
In reading this post, I hope you will understand and appreciate why good sugar control makes you lose weight. It's because with good blood sugar control, you don't need insulin to be secreted by the pancreas. And with no insulin, the liver isn't producing fatty acids but making fatty acids out of fat stores and allowing these fatty acids to be burned for energy. As contrary to what many think here, fatty acid oxidation (aka beta-oxidation) is not bad when the predominant pathway of metabolism is sugar metabolism - oxidative phosphorylation.
You don't need to concern yourself with the many supplements that at their best are mere band-aid, and at worst, maintenance drugs.