Determining Effect Of Diet On Metabolism And Weight Loss/Gain Through Data Collection

[methylenewhite]

Could you try potato only diet for a while to see its effect on metabolic marker please? Or perhaps skim milk and potato.

 

[Cirion]

I am pretty sure there is an upper limit on potatoes. I've in fact already played with 1 lb a day, 2 lb, and 3 lb. I've never had ideal #'s with 3 lb intake but 1-2 lb seems to be the sweet spot for me. I don't think having potato as my only carb would be helpful (I like sugar), but I could potentially see having potato as your only starch source. I still have rice, but I've thought about replacing that with potato since white rice has very little nutrition.

HOWEVER, I've never tried 3 lb a day while eliminating white rice (so in other words, going from 2 to 3 lb a day but not changing my overall carb or starch intake a day) and this is something I've considered trying.

 

[methylenewhite]

When I traveled in India I heard about someone called Aloo Baba, Potato Guru from Pushkar. He eats potato only about 45 years, he is in his 70s. At least he claims to do so.

Aloo Baba: Pushkar’s potato guru

 

[Dobbler]

It shouldn't take months to see any benefit. I agree that it may take months to get the full benefit, sure. But by ditching animal meat, I see benefits within 1-2 days, as example of something I see effects of quickly in days and not months. Yeah I didn't get "Healed" or "Cured" or anything like that but I absolutely see tangible effects soon like increased temps, more energy, etc. A week or two should be long enough to see benefits of some sort ( a little better energy, a little better sleep, some weight loss, improved temps/pulses, etc). That said, maybe I'll try T3 again sometime, I dunno tho. I'm not convinced thyroid is needed especially when at a young age. If you're still young, the thyroid is 100% capable of providing the T3 you need. If it's not, there's always a reason and just taking thyroid feels wrong to me, a cheat, and bypassing why your T3 is low in the first place (lack of nutrients, lack of calories, lack of sleep, lack of sunlight whatever, all of which taking T3 is not going to fix) plus I remain un-interested in using such an approach long-term, don't wanna get stuck relying on it as a crutch. For example--I suspect I'm low in magnesium. Hence the huge benefit of Epsom salt baths. Just taking T3 might possibly help me retain magnesium I do have better, but it doesn't fix the underlying deficiency magically. Then again it might even make me use up magnesium even quicker, making the deficiency even worse. I get why people use it, but if I can fix my thyroid without it, then I know I've truly fixed the root cause of my problems and not just masked it with thyroid. Both times I've been healthy in my life I never took thyroid. I don't think it's needed when nutrition and environmental stressors are on point.

Even cavemen used to "supplement" thyroid by eating the wild animals they caught, from head to toes. That animal was dead for very short time before they ate it so they were full of thyroid hormones when it entered the stomach. Also thyroid is our first line defence against stress, and we are so pumped up with stress and chemicals, it's just wise to "cheat" if you call it that. If you went to live to jungle and hunted your animals, that's the same as taking thyroid.
Also the function of thyroid is to make you lean mean well oiled machine and to boost the effectiveness of your cells and organs and stress systems. That's why i think it's the center of RPs ideaology.

 

[Cirion]

When I traveled in India I heard about someone called Aloo Baba, Potato Guru from Pushkar. He eats potato only about 45 years, he is in his 70s. At least he claims to do so.

Aloo Baba: Pushkar’s potato guru

Potatoes are one of the most nutritious foods out there, no doubt. But I don't think it's optimal to use that as the only food source, there's no way you're getting all the micronutrients and other things the body may need that way.

But, it probably does satisfy all macronutrient needs, so you can probably survive on it, since potatoes are actually somewhat rich in protein after you account for the keto acids, and of course plenty of carbs.

 

[Cirion]

Even cavemen used to "supplement" thyroid by eating the wild animals they caught, from head to toes. That animal was dead for very short time before they ate it so they were full of thyroid hormones when it entered the stomach. Also thyroid is our first line defence against stress, and we are so pumped up with stress and chemicals, it's just wise to "cheat" if you call it that. If you went to live to jungle and hunted your animals, that's the same as taking thyroid.
Also the function of thyroid is to make you lean mean well oiled machine and to boost the effectiveness of your cells and organs and stress systems. That's why i think it's the center of RPs ideaology.

Yeah I mean it's a fair point. I'm just saying I've gotten to almost optimal health without thyroid medication before, just 2 yrs ago, so I don't think it's needed for someone my age. I'm not even convinced still that it's needed for people even 100+. Plenty of healthy centenarians who are on zero medications. They just live low stress lifestyles. But I guess if people still want to live in big cities, it might be needed. I don't love big cities. I'd probably love to just live on an island or a small town next to a beach or maybe a community in the mountains or something. I agree with Ray that eliminating the environmental stressors is gonna have the biggest impact on your health over anything else. Having your own personal garden etc too would be very helpful, probably will also do that one day.

 

[Vinny]

You should really try some T3 or T3/T4 for good 6 months. You said you briefly tried it, in my experience, even with pure T3 the positive effects start to take place well after 1-3 months. Expecting to heal your body and stress systems after T3 kicking in after 30 minutes is bogus. It takes months to stress hormones to come down and THEN the healing may start.

Is this your experience, Dobbler? If yes, would you make a thread about it?

 

[methylenewhite]

@Cirion do you do bag breathing? Could you test its against metabolic marker please?

 

[milkboi]

Yo @Cirion, how did you come to the conclusion that the liver is your (or one of your) main problem/s?

 

[Cirion]

Yo @Cirion, how did you come to the conclusion that the liver is your (or one of your) main problem/s?

Many reasons, including but not limited to

-- Poor glycogen storage ( I can not last the night, even with very large carbohydrate intakes)
-- Estrogen dominance symptoms ( The liver is one of the main estrogen detoxers)
-- Excessive bloating, obesity, brain fog, and many other symptoms of sluggish liver (I probably check at least 50% of the boxes if not more)
-- Intolerance to caffeine (telltale sign of compromised Stage II liver detox capability). Caffeine accelerates Stage I liver detox speed but not Stage II.
-- The liver needs a solid amount of protein. Upwards of 20% calories from diet, and I had been playing with lower protein for a while now.
-- The liver needs a lot of B-vitamins. Processing carbs expends lots of B-vitamins. As does generic chronic stress. Haidut had a great interview a couple of weeks ago where he talks about this. I hadn't been getting the B-vitamins I need in the quantities that I needed them.

 

[Cirion]

This will be a recap of some of my other posts in other threads, but I realized I haven't updated this specific topic in a couple of weeks because I'm busy behind the scenes still working trends and figuring out the last few missing keys (at least for my metabolism). I did however make a relatively important discovery this week from my data -- that not only am I sensitive to tryptophan, I am also sensitive to cystine. I also tested keeping a relatively low tryptophan budget while having beef in the diet -- and beef still jacks up my thyroid. Then it turns out that I literally "stumbled" upon what Ray Peat specifically says also... that Cystine and Tryptophan are the primary anti-metabolic amino acids. I did plot up Histidine and Methionine which are two other anti-AA's, but the effects were not as potent, so now I know why Ray only singles out Cystein and Tryptophan. I accidentally experimentally proved him! Always nice to see Ray right again on things. One of my next experiments is to start playing with protein powders to see if I can rectify my protein deficiencies this way without aggravating the cystine/tryptophan toxic state my body is in. This also helps to explain why I do so well on ultra high carb (90%) diets in terms of temp, pulse etc. With that high carb, the body has no need to catabolize proteins, which protects my body from cystine and tryptophan by-products of catabolism. But the moment I drop my carb intake, boom, the floodgates of hell open up in my body and my metabolism crashes HARD. I will experiment first with bone broth protein powder as its the most bening you can get -- very low cystine and tryptophan content.

 

[methylenewhite]

What are cystine and tryptophan max intake then? Some target values to try build a diet around.

 

[Cirion]

Sorry got lazy and didn't post the plots. Here were the plots I put together in my main log: (Don't mind the skulls, I just put them there for emphasis lol)

 

[Cirion]

I'm not dead. Still plugging behind the scenes. I'm actually a little stumped now that I have way more data. I've found a few conflicting plots. That's the bad news. The good news is I have found that some plots, plotted over very long time (56 day average) start to make VERY clear trends. Here's an example one of a couple that I am trying to wrack my brain to understand:

Clearly, body temps improve with an almost perfect correlation (R squared of 0.9529) with increase calories. However, after around the 4200-4500 calorie mark, weight gain is also almost guaranteed. These seem contradictory to me. Why is it you feel better, have better temps, but gain weight? I have to admit, this seems somewhat contrary to what I thought I would see -- that the increased temps would also result in weight loss. Similar trends show with Carbs, Protein intake:

 

[Cirion]

Current hypothesis is the missing factor is salt/sodium. I had this thought as I plotted up starch which causes weight gain but also increased temps. It could be that starch is a vehicle for salt (it generally is for me) and the salt increases temperatures but the starch itself causes weight gain? Same with protein, which I usually heavily salt... h mmmmm

 

[sladerunner69]

Macros seem to be strongly correlated to waking pulse.

View attachment 13687

Whoa there, you're getting upwards of 75% of your calories from carbs? I suppose if you are truly eating 5000 calories a day that will still allow for sufficient protein consumption. Still, you must be eating/drinking nearly every waking hour.

 

[sladerunner69]

I'm not dead. Still plugging behind the scenes. I'm actually a little stumped now that I have way more data. I've found a few conflicting plots. That's the bad news. The good news is I have found that some plots, plotted over very long time (56 day average) start to make VERY clear trends. Here's an example one of a couple that I am trying to wrack my brain to understand:

View attachment 14845

Clearly, body temps improve with an almost perfect correlation (R squared of 0.9529) with increase calories. However, after around the 4200-4500 calorie mark, weight gain is also almost guaranteed. These seem contradictory to me. Why is it you feel better, have better temps, but gain weight? I have to admit, this seems somewhat contrary to what I thought I would see -- that the increased temps would also result in weight loss. Similar trends show with Carbs, Protein intake:

View attachment 14846
View attachment 14847

What are your preferred protein sources? Primarily dairy or meat?

 

[Cirion]

Whoa there, you're getting upwards of 75% of your calories from carbs? I suppose if you are truly eating 5000 calories a day that will still allow for sufficient protein consumption. Still, you must be eating/drinking nearly every waking hour.

I have gone as high as 90% on carbs, although I'm doing more like 80% currently. Yeah, I eat/drink a lot.

What are your preferred protein sources? Primarily dairy or meat?

This is still a work in progress. For a while I was going full vegan, then realized I went too low on protein. However, I don't like meat, it reliably tanks my metabolic rate, and ascribe to views like Kate Deering who says you should have meat 1x a week max, and not even that if you're hypo. I am playing around with dairy currently, but don't want much fat so just skim milk, small amount of cheese, 1-2 eggs a day. This needs further experimentation, but I think shellfish could be on the table as well. I did pretty well having shrimp last Friday. Gonna pick up more shrimp at the store. So basically I went from vegan to pescetarian (only flesh is seafood). I also have gelatin every day.

 

[sladerunner69]

I have gone as high as 90% on carbs, although I'm doing more like 80% currently. Yeah, I eat/drink a lot.



This is still a work in progress. For a while I was going full vegan, then realized I went too low on protein. However, I don't like meat, it reliably tanks my metabolic rate, and ascribe to views like Kate Deering who says you should have meat 1x a week max, and not even that if you're hypo. I am playing around with dairy currently, but don't want much fat so just skim milk, small amount of cheese, 1-2 eggs a day. This needs further experimentation, but I think shellfish could be on the table as well. I did pretty well having shrimp last Friday. Gonna pick up more shrimp at the store. So basically I went from vegan to pescetarian (only flesh is seafood). I also have gelatin every day.

Meat does tend to lower the metabolic rate somewhat, but is a unique source of b-vitamins and zinc. That is why Peat often recommends to have shellfish and liver about once a week.

Personally I have not noticed much difference in mood/libido/energy with pulse rate. However, I have noticed that if I follow the recommended protocol towards increasing metabolic rate through OJ/MILK diet, aspirin, taking thyroid, and get my resting pulse rate up >85, sometimes 90, I can feel pretty off. I get anxious, emotionless, and lose libido. I also get strange little nerve pains throughout my joints, hands, feet, and back. This is especially noticeable after taking thyroid and aspirin. I think it too strongly blocks estrogen, which is known to have an opioid effect on the nerves. When I do not eat for a while, or have some muscle meat or a "normal" meal, and my pulse returns to 70-80, I feel significantly better.

 

[Cirion]

I notice a stronger correlation with metabolism with temperature and not pulse which is why I take a closer look at temperature than pulse usually. That said when my temperatures are good my pulses are usually good too (aka, 85+). I do track pulses too but they're not quite as interesting imo on that I agree. But like last saturday, waking temp was 98.7F and waking pulse was 85 and I felt good, one of my best days in a while actually. But yes, artificial stimulation with too much supplements (aspirin, thyroid, caffeine) can be detrimental and such temps/pulses are much preferential to achieve through diet and environment/sleep changes instead. That said waking temps/pulses are king above all, I don't even really track temp and pulses during the day anymore unless I feel really bad and am curious.