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

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Cirion

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Some harder-core data mining.

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Using the same method I used in aircraft design in grad school, we can essentially impose the following constraints (shown by red lines). Pulse > 80 bpm, temp > 98.5F, weight change neutral or weight lost. Doing so we get the following

Waking Pulse constraint: Carbs 700-1000g, Protein 100-270g, Fats 0-70g
Waking Temp constraint: Carbs 700-1000g, Protein 50g-200g, Fats 0g-65g
Weight constraint: Carbs: 650-900g, Protein 75g-270g, Fats 0g-75g

Now, the technique you do for aircraft design (OR anything with lots of constraints) is you essentially take the most limiting factors. So to meet all constraints, this leaves us with:

Carbs 700-900g, Protein 75g-200g, Fats 0g-65g.

Taking the middle points

Carbs 800g, Protein 138g, Fats 33g
 
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Keep up the good work, man, I really hope you figure this out.

I keep mentally wrestling with the low fat concept but the horror stories and also studies that show less testosterone keep me at a distance.

I do seem to feel best on an 80-10-10 type protocol but I don't want to waste away the little muscle I have. And I have heard too many bad stories about hormones, teeth, etc
 
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Cirion

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Doing the same with calories:

Pulse, Calories 3700-5000
Temp, 3800-4200
Weight change, 3200-5000

Constraint limits range to 3800-4200, again pointing towards roughly a 4000 average being desired.

The macros calculated previously of Carbs 800g, Protein 138g, Fats 33g results in 4060 calories, right on the money, with 18-69-13 percent P/C/F ratios.
 
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Cirion

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Keep up the good work, man, I really hope you figure this out.

I keep mentally wrestling with the low fat concept but the horror stories and also studies that show less testosterone keep me at a distance.

I do seem to feel best on an 80-10-10 type protocol but I don't want to waste away the little muscle I have. And I have heard too many bad stories about hormones, teeth, etc

Thanks, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired so I'm putting forth all of my engineering expertise to solve this complex problem.

I think low fat has merits especially if you need to lose fat like me. But I am starting to realize, too low fat is not good either. There's definitely a minimum you need to keep things like bile production going and it seems to be roughly 10-15% fat intake minimum. Also it helps to have SFA to buffer against PUFA, especially when you're actively purging PUFA from your body fat stores.
 

YourUniverse

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The macros calculated previously of Carbs 800g, Protein 138g, Fats 33g results in 4060 calories, right on the money, with 18-69-13 percent P/C/F ratios.
Money in the bank.

You said you're 6'0 and of a certain weight. If you eat as described above, you should undoubtedly lose weight and improve biomarkers like temp and pulse. As your weight drops, do you expect to require less calories to keep healthy biomarkers?
 
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Cirion

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Money in the bank.

You said you're 6'0 and of a certain weight. If you eat as described above, you should undoubtedly lose weight and improve biomarkers like temp and pulse. As your weight drops, do you expect to require less calories to keep healthy biomarkers?

I continue to plan to track as I go and course correct as needed. I expect things to change a little. How they will change, I am not sure, but it's possible my fat needs might slightly increase and carb needs might slowly decrease for example, but I don't know.

I actually don't expect calories to drop much (if it does, maybe to around 3500 calories). Especially if I slowly start to re-introduce some weightlifting. (I don't plan to introduce weightlifting until I have at least a couple weeks of stable 98.6F temp, 85 bpm pulse, etc). But I could be wrong.
 

aquaman

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The 80bpm/98.5 is a bit arbitrary though. I don’t think one should wake up with heart rate and temp this high.

BPM of 70, temp of 98.0 would be excellent, especially if it raises post-breakfast.
 

Pdohlen

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Great work! Very interesting read. Have you considered plotting relations over 2-3 days, as things might take some time to adjust? Or running a multi factor regression analysis with your data? You would have to be selective with your variables though, since many might be interdependent.
 
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Cirion

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The 80bpm/98.5 is a bit arbitrary though. I don’t think one should wake up with heart rate and temp this high.

BPM of 70, temp of 98.0 would be excellent, especially if it raises post-breakfast.

I disagree, although most would agree with you. I have a very simple reason I disagree with Broda Barnes about 98F or even 98.2F being sufficient for one very simple reason---I feel like **** every time I wake up with a less than ideal temperature, so that's good enough for me to know I need to wake up at higher, as those also correlate to my better days (and usually correlate to weight loss, and higher pulses also). A temperate of 98.6F upon waking usually means you have managed to not run out of glucose overnight. I agree though that breakfast should raise it further still.

The thing is that 98.6F and 85BPM pulse is correlated to better metabolism and health (pretty much a direct quote from RP), so I extrapolate that to say, if your health is perfect, then you'll also wake up at this condition, which means your liver health is pristine and doesn't run out of stored energy, so you wake up with the same energy you went to bed with. Ray says that someone with perfect health can in fact fast as long as 12-14 hrs with no problems, which means in 8 hrs, they should still have at least 25-33% stored energy left and thus no need to release adrenaline to secrete FFA's for energy which ultimately results in reduced metabolism and thus reduced waking temp and pulses. It's true, though, that adrenaline can increase pulse and temp artificially. However, I'd argue that even in this scenario, the higher temp and pulse is still better. Why do I say this? Well, because it means you woke up just in time to feed yourself, as the elevated temp and pulse from adrenaline rarely lasts for more than a few minutes, after which time your temp and pulse drops. If however you wake up and your temp and pulse is already low, it means the adrenaline spike has already come and gone and you're worse off (The metabolism has tanked for hours already). Now, of course, the ideal scenario is no adrenaline spike AND wake up at 98.6F, but I'd still prefer to wake up even to adrenaline with good temp than with no adrenaline and horrible temps.

Saying it again in slightly different terms: The phases of your metabolism look something like this:

1. Running off stored glucose (ideal): temps 98.6F+, pulses 80bpm+ --->
2. run out of glucose, body secretes adrenaline: temps probably still 98.6F, pulses likely still 80bpm, but you feel hungry/agitated etc.... --->
3. 30-60 minutes later (just an estimate), temps tanking to say 98F or less, pulses tanking to 70s, 60s, even 50s (if really unhealthy).

So waking up to even #2 is preferable to #3 as #3 means you've run out of glucose for a long time where as #2 means you only just ran out.

Great work! Very interesting read. Have you considered plotting relations over 2-3 days, as things might take some time to adjust? Or running a multi factor regression analysis with your data? You would have to be selective with your variables though, since many might be interdependent.

I have started to look at 2-3 day rolling averages. I haven't yet come to any really interesting conclusions regarding these but if I do I will plot them.

I also plan to do multivariate analyses eventually, but I don't quite have enough data points for that to be extremely meaningful just yet (probably need at least 100 samples, I have about 60 now).
 
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Cirion

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@Pdohlen

good idea with rolling averages. I am starting to see some interesting trends pop up, but not ready to plot anything just yet.

That said, I am looking at top 10 of 3 day rolling average waking body temp and am noticing that carb intake needs are probably very high. For these 10 pts, 3 day rolling avg carbs is 800-950 gram carbs.
 
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YourUniverse

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Ray has said that sugar is the single most "protective all-purpose molecule", and cholesterol is second. It would make sense that more glucose is needed where more healing is needed.
 
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Cirion

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Ray has said that sugar is the single most "protective all-purpose molecule", and cholesterol is second. It would make sense that more glucose is needed where more healing is needed.

I agree, I can't say I'm extremely surprised.

Protein and fat intake seems a lot more volatile though. It seems I've had days where both 3 day avg protein and 3 day avg fats were some what low, others where they were higher and 3 day temps were good, but in all instances 3 day avg carb was consistently high 800+ grams.

3 day avg carbs range from 800-950g
3 day avg protein range from 75-220g
3 day avg fats range from 6-50g

Not yet sure why protein and fats so volatile even on 3 day rolling avg. May have to look at even longer scale, but things start to wash out when you start to go towards 7 days avg
 

TripleOG

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Due to recent discussions on Fernstrom ratios and milk quality you've been involved in, I've reassessed my dairy intake. Swapped out a large chunk for meat+gelatin+eggshell and feel much better. Compared full day amino acid profiles and and the difference seems negligible. BCAA, Tyr and Phe are a little higher on high-dairy days, but so are Trp, Met, and His. I get more proline and much more glycine with meat+gelatin. Cal:Phos ratio sitting at 1.3:1. Overall it's been a good change. Maybe commercial dairy isn't all its cracked up to be for me. Idk.

[insert William Blake quote]
 
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Cirion

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Due to recent discussions on Fernstrom ratios and milk quality you've been involved in, I've reassessed my dairy intake. Swapped out a large chunk for meat+gelatin+eggshell and feel much better. Compared full day amino acid profiles and and the difference seems negligible. BCAA, Tyr and Phe are a little higher on high-dairy days, but so are Trp, Met, and His. I get more proline and much more glycine with meat+gelatin. Cal:Phos ratio sitting at 1.3:1. Overall it's been a good change. Maybe commercial dairy isn't all its cracked up to be for me. Idk.

[insert William Blake quote]

Interesting. I haven't yet added eggshell to my diet so I have no calcium source currently. Is there any good brand of eggshell you can buy directly? I don't eat eggs currently so I would really hate to waste perfectly good eggs just to get shells...

Did some more digging. Filtered down to top 10 3 day avg temps AND days where I lost weight (also a 3-day avg) and here's what we get. Less volatility BTW.

845g 3-day carbs, 189g 3-day avg protein, 42g 3-day avg fats and 4500 3-day avg calories.

Ranges
800-900g carb
170-220g protein
30-50g fat

The interesting conclusion here is that people who told me high protein is the way to go... Well, looks like they're right. Plus, I under-estimated my calories. I thought 3800-4200 was good. Turns out I need 4500. I finally feel like I'm starting to get vindicated that indeed, high calorie is the way to go to feel good AND lose weight.
 

TripleOG

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Interesting. I haven't yet added eggshell to my diet so I have no calcium source currently. Is there any good brand of eggshell you can buy directly? I don't eat eggs currently so I would really hate to waste perfectly good eggs just to get shells...

Currently using this brand. Comes very fine. Will last a very long time .

Idk where they get their "1 teaspoon = 1900mg calcium" calculation, though. Eggshell is 40% calcium. A teaspoon of their product measures almost 8g on my calibrated scales. That's around 3g calcium per teaspoon. In reality, 1/8-1/4 tsp (1g-2g eggshell) is all I've needed to balance daily phosphorus intake
 
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Cirion

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Currently using this brand. Comes very fine. Will last a very long time .

Idk where they get their "1 teaspoon = 1900mg calcium" calculation, though. Eggshell is 40% calcium. A teaspoon of their product measures almost 8g on my calibrated scales. That's around 3g calcium per teaspoon. In reality, 1/8-1/4 tsp (1g-2g eggshell) is all I've needed to balance daily phosphate intake

Excellent. Seeing as how I'm likely going to consistently get around 180g of protein a day based upon my findings, balancing all that phosphorus is gonna be key.
 

danielbb

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Couple of thoughts....

In the other thread (I grow tired of defending myself there because I never attempted to tell anyone what to do - only share ideas to help one design their own system), I've shared all I know on how to restore metabolism. Mobilizing your fat stores is a different although related issue. There are no free lunches when it comes to shedding body fat. When I first got serious about losing all the pounds I had so foolishly accumulated, I was able to lose 4-7 lbs a week (went from about 260 to about 195 in about 4 months). I was dieting hard and watching my calories and working out like a fiend and often several times a day. I was suffering side-effects however and was experiencing headaches along with moodiness and grumpiness. No doubt I was pushing too hard and likely flooding my system with pufa. I think a reasonable goal for men is probably 1-2 lbs per week whereas women who may have less to lose in general, 1 lb per week is probably a reasonable goal. Everyone has to decide for themselves however.

If you are accountable to the scale everyday, and lose 1 lb per week, that is 52 lbs in one year and by anyone's standards, and in my opinion, that would be an outstanding achievement. The best technique I've found is Intermittent Fasting (IF) because it gives me direct control over the scale just about everyday. I like eating breakfast in the morning, skipping lunch, and eating dinner. Once per week and on Monday, since I am almost always up several pounds due to eating too much and socializing over the weekend, I skip breakfast and lunch giving me one 24 hour fast per week. Now that I am at my target weight of 160, that system keeps me at my target weight. If I feel like eating lunch on a given day, I eat. There are 9 million different ways to eat less. When you eat less, it forces your body to mobilize your fat stores for energy. I also like IF because I do not have to eat like a bird at eat meal. I just focus on productivity at work while fasting and it takes my mind off hunger. When you restore your metabolism, your hunger hormones (e.g., grehlin, leptin) will start working properly in about 6 weeks. This is of course assuming you are not eating cheat meals and messing up your hormonal system once or twice per week. Love to say that just eating clean alone would do the trick (it very well may but may take more time than most people are willing to wait to see results). There are no magic pills or tricks. Restoring metabolism will help greatly getting your hunger signals working properly but somewhere, somehow YOU have to figure out a way to be accountable to your goal.
 

lampofred

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Currently using this brand. Comes very fine. Will last a very long time .

Idk where they get their "1 teaspoon = 1900mg calcium" calculation, though. Eggshell is 40% calcium. A teaspoon of their product measures almost 8g on my calibrated scales. That's around 3g calcium per teaspoon. In reality, 1/8-1/4 tsp (1g-2g eggshell) is all I've needed to balance daily phosphorus intake

How is it that dogs are given better quality food than humans.

I've seen sites saying liver is essential for a dog's health because of fat soluble vitamins, I've seen sites that said gelatin is necessary for animals because muscle meats are too refined, aspirin for animals has no additives whereas human aspirin is full of silica and titanium dioxide and all sorts of junk, and now this site is even talking about calcium to phosphate ratio for dogs. Whereas when it comes to the human diet, most people I know have never eaten liver or gelatin in their life, and they will have no idea what on earth you're talking about if you mention something like calcium to phosphate ratio.
 
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Cirion

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Couple of thoughts....

In the other thread (I grow tired of defending myself there because I never attempted to tell anyone what to do - only share ideas to help one design their own system), I've shared all I know on how to restore metabolism. Mobilizing your fat stores is a different although related issue. There are no free lunches when it comes to shedding body fat. When I first got serious about losing all the pounds I had so foolishly accumulated, I was able to lose 4-7 lbs a week (went from about 260 to about 195 in about 4 months). I was dieting hard and watching my calories and working out like a fiend and often several times a day. I was suffering side-effects however and was experiencing headaches along with moodiness and grumpiness. No doubt I was pushing too hard and likely flooding my system with pufa. I think a reasonable goal for men is probably 1-2 lbs per week whereas women who may have less to lose in general, 1 lb per week is probably a reasonable goal. Everyone has to decide for themselves however.

If you are accountable to the scale everyday, and lose 1 lb per week, that is 52 lbs in one year and by anyone's standards, and in my opinion, that would be an outstanding achievement. The best technique I've found is Intermittent Fasting (IF) because it gives me direct control over the scale just about everyday. I like eating breakfast in the morning, skipping lunch, and eating dinner. Once per week and on Monday, since I am almost always up several pounds due to eating too much and socializing over the weekend, I skip breakfast and lunch giving me one 24 hour fast per week. Now that I am at my target weight of 160, that system keeps me at my target weight. If I feel like eating lunch on a given day, I eat. There are 9 million different ways to eat less. When you eat less, it forces your body to mobilize your fat stores for energy. I also like IF because I do not have to eat like a bird at eat meal. I just focus on productivity at work while fasting and it takes my mind off hunger. When you restore your metabolism, your hunger hormones (e.g., grehlin, leptin) will start working properly in about 6 weeks. This is of course assuming you are not eating cheat meals and messing up your hormonal system once or twice per week. Love to say that just eating clean alone would do the trick (it very well may but may take more time than most people are willing to wait to see results). There are no magic pills or tricks. Restoring metabolism will help greatly getting your hunger signals working properly but somewhere, somehow YOU have to figure out a way to be accountable to your goal.

Thanks. I have a ton of experience (almost 10 yrs) of dieting. Caloric restriction, fasting etc though stopped working for me once I hit 30 years old. Every time I do either it destroys my metabolism. I can lose weight to a degree following these strategies but it hasn't proved helpful in the long run. I have extensive experience in virtually all diets.

I don't believe in magic pills either but I do firmly believe you can lose weight without forceful caloric restriction. Other people on these forums have done it, and I will also. Caloric restriction simply isn't sustainable because it reliable lowers your metabolism and eventually halts fat loss anyway. The last time I did a caloric restriction I stalled, and my waking temperatures dropped to 96F showing I destroyed my metabolism. Never again.

My opinions are very contrarian. But with my 10 yrs of experience, I now believe not restricting calories is the least painful and also the most realistic long term solution. I haven't proven it 100% yet, but I believe I'm close to doing so. The key to do so is simple. Maintain a 98.6F temperature and 80+bpm pulse each and every day. You will literally automatically lose weight effortlessly if you can accomplish that. I am no longer interested in losing weight if it doesn't also restore my metabolism. Losing weight does not automatically restore your temperature and pulse.

The combination of pulse rate and temperature is much better than either one alone. I happened to see two people whose resting pulse rates were chronically extremely high, despite their hypothyroid symptoms. When they took a thyroid supplement, their pulse rates came down to normal. (Healthy and intelligent groups of people have been found to have an average resting pulse rate of 85/minute, while less healthy groups average close to 70/minute.)

(Ray peat quote from Preventing and treating cancer with progesterone.) This is where I get my 85bpm goal from.
 
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