Hi Everyone! And Please Criticize My Peat Diet/supplements (plus Pregnenolone & DHEA)

[Strongbad]

Hi, everyone :) I just found Ray Peat diet earlier last week after discovering Danny Roddy in the journey to reverse my hair loss. Please critique my diet and supplements to make it better.

A quick background of my diet: I've been on low-carb paleo diet for a few years now. It's been good to me when it comes to weight loss. But on December 2014, I started to realize that my hair has been thinning eversince I started low carb diet, so I searched for hair loss solutions online and started consuming lots of (yuck) PUFA foods like Almond, sunflower seeds, carob etc because they're anti-oxidants with lots of essential-oil nutritients etc. I also applied Almond Oil and Castor Oil on my hair. Needless to say, it worsens the hair loss. So upon discovering Danny Roddy and Ray Peat, I immediately changed my diet last Thursday night (February 5).

This is my stat:

- Male
- 35.5 years old
- 5'9" (175cm)
- 160lbs (about 72.5kg)
- lean but v-shaped somewhat muscular

My goal via Peat diet:

- stoping and even reversing hair loss. Even better if I can regain my long surfer hair in early 20s!
- lifting my face up for anti aging (using pregnenolone)
- maybe becoming a few inches taller (using DHEA)

My new Peat diet meal (I only eat twice a day at noon and evening. Is this good or bad?):

- 1 raw carrot, chopped and mixed with apple cider vinegar and coconut oil
- 1 glass of orange juice (no pulp) mixed with 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1 glass of whole milk (lactose-free) mixed with a teaspoon of Matcha tea, a teaspoon of Raw Cacao powder, a teaspoon of raw honey, a few drops of vanilla stevia and a drop of vanilla extract
- 8 oz of chuckroast beef cooked + 1 egg (total 2 per day) + 6 oysters (only once a day, on noon meal) cooked in grassfed butter
- 1 big tablespoon of cottage cheese + 1 big tablespoon of Greek Yogurt (low carb)
- seasonings: 1/2 teaspoon of Himalayan salt, 1 huge tablespoon of coconut oil, a tablespoon of Great Lakes Collagen Gelatin

I also drink a cup of homemade beef bone broth every night.

I eat 8oz of beef liver twice a week, separated by 3-4 days each (out of 7 days/week)

My Supplements:

Vitamin D3, Vitamin B1, Ester C, NAC, Activated Charcoal, Zinc. I take 1 pill of each per day, except D3 (4 little tablets) and Activated charcoal (2 tablets once every 2 or 3 days)

Positive results :

- better mood
- better sleep
- more energy, sometimes hyper :)
- skin tone looks better

Negative / mixed results:

- some parts of scalp is growing hair (like the very front of the crown) yet at the same time hair recedes / thinning more? My scalp becomes more visible each day yet the existing hair grows longer. What the heck?
- Bloated gut, my weight is still 160lbs but I'm loosing my abs. Maybe too much liquid from orange juice and milk?
- Sometimes my stomach hurts (too much liquid in the diet? too much for the thyroid and/or liver?)

So is the diet good? Do I need to improve it? If so, which parts do I need to increase/decrease? Maybe adding new food or removing some food completely? Additional supplements?

I'll also plan to use pregnenolone and DHEA supplements because I want to look younger and maybe a few inches taller. What do you guys think is a good dosage of those two, based on my age, physical stat and diet? I don't want to lose hair for using mis-dosed pregnenolone and I certainly don't want to have enlarged liver and/or alzheimer for excessive DHEA. Pretty sure I have to take more vitamin A to counter acnes from these 2 supplements.

Again, the goal is hair growth, face-lifting and growing taller.

Thanks in advance!! :)

 

[mt_dreams]

Just a couple of thoughts not necessarily related to growing hair or height, which I don't know much about.

1/2 a teaspoon of salt seems pretty low. Especially if you are taking in extra liquids.

adding baking soda to your oj nulifies the vitamin c. Unless you are getting it from somewhere else, you may want to stop that practice, and just swish some baking soda water in your mouth after you have drank the oj.

eating only 2 meals a day may result in your body releasing extra cortisol, which would probably be a bad thing for hair growth. You may have a slow metabolism (coming from low carb paleo) right now which allows this to be tolerable, but once that gets back up to speed, you may need to pulse feed a little more. I also don't see much carb calories (seems like there is only 75 grams or so from your list), and over time you may want to feed yourself more sugar fuel to help with some of the things you hoping to achieve. Having a carb to protein ratio of at least 2:1 will ensure that your protein gets used for repair, and not for fuel. If your protein level is around 110grams, then taking in at least 220g of carbs would be beneficial. You're fat & protein levels are within range.

the raw carrot makes some people bloated. If this persists, give bamboo shoots or mushrooms a try.

eating oysters & taking a zinc supplement every day may lead to higher than optimal levels of zinc, though you may be one of those individuals who need more zinc.

the milk proteins will absorb the antioxidants in the matcha, so if you are taking in matcha for this reason, it would be better to take at a different time than with the milk.

There's not enough magnesium, potassium, calcium, or folate in your diet. You may want to download cornometer and insert all the food you eat to see other possible nutrient deficiencies.

 

[tara]

Strongbad
Glad you are getting some improvements. :)

For general health, which gives you the best shot at your specific goals but doesn't guarantee them, my hunches would be similar:
Way more carbs (fruit/juice, milk, honey, sucrose). Increase gradually if you need to. At least 2:1, carb:protein, maybe more.
More alkaline minerals - calcium (milk/eggshell/oystershell), magnesium (OJ, coffee, supplement, greens), potassium (fruit), sodium (salt, baking soda).
Could maybe add some more gelatine than you are to balance muscle meat?
Breakfast including carbs and protein close to waking up, probably more meals.
Eat carrot salad away from other meals (maybe you are already doing this). Charcoal also away from food/nutrients.
If all the liquid you are drinking is 1 glass OJ, 1 glass milk, and 1cup stock (less than 1 l/1quart total?), that doesn't sound like much liquid. It varies from person to person, but I need a lot more than that, and I can get stomach ache and other issues from too little liquids.

Notice what happens/how you feel as you make changes, and include that information in your decisions. You'll need to figure out what works for you - it's not identical for everyone.
I think bloating and gut discomfort can sometimes happen when people start to eat more of what they need after a period of deprivation - the GI tract might take a while to adapt to eating adequate food - doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't eat it. Not from Peat, but bloat seems to commonly follow very low carb or low calorie diets when people eventually start to eat again - it may be an inevitable part of recovery. But if you can identify any specific item that is bothering it, you can see if you can find a suitably nutritious replacement. Poster Mittir has written good posts on some of the common irritants, but it varies from person to person.

If you are wanting topical hair treatment, some people have tried a solution of one or more of niacinamide, aspirin, caffeine. Not sure if there are demonstrated results, but at least theoretically they may help support metabolism in the the area. But do get your sugar consumption up first (and/or you could add sugar to this solution, but that could get sticky :) )

Personally I'd recommend improving diet and seeing what happens with that before adding new hormone supps. You might not need them, and if you do need them, you need to have good nutrition in place to support them doing their job anyway.

 

[Blossom]

Welcome strongbad. Mt_dreams and Tara provided excellent suggestions and I can't think of anything further to add at this time. I did want to tell you that I've grown new hair on my head and 1.25 inches in height since discovering Peat's work. This has happened gradually for me over a year and a half. I didn't use dhea because I'm female (it makes me grow facial hair) but I have used pregnenolone as part of my Peat inspired approach. I'm a 45 year old female coming from a low carb paleo diet background. My goal was not to grow hair or grow taller it just happened.

 

[marcar72]

adding baking soda to your oj nulifies the vitamin c.

Not true at all. Adding baking soda to OJ makes the ascorbic acid into sodium ascorbate which is still entirely bioavailable to the human body as Vitamin C. :2cents

 

[mt_dreams]

Not true at all. Adding baking soda to OJ makes the ascorbic acid into sodium ascorbate which is still entirely bioavailable to the human body as Vitamin C. :2cents

Good to know. thanks.
I guess I was under the impression that the alkalinity of the baking soda would degrade the vitamin c.

 

[Strongbad]

Thank you for your help! I modified my daily diet with cronometer and will spread my meal into 4 or 5 meals per day to boost the metabolism a bit. I took a snapshot of the ingredients off cronometer:

And this is the total nutritional content:

The total calories content and usages are:

- carbs: 696.7 kcal (24 %)
- protein: 600.4 kcal (20%)
- fat: 1625 kcal (55%)
- alcohol: 20 kcal (1%) off vanilla extract

BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate): 1763 kcal (67%)
Activity: 881.3 kcal (33%)

I put myself as Moderately Active (BMR x 0.5) although I spend most of my time at work sitting on desk all day. But I'm relatively okay outside of work and move around a bit. I haven't been to the gym for a while now. I'd try to be around 160lbs to 170lbs so I don't want to eat too much calories that I gain so much weight.

Do you guys think the diet is okay or need more tweaking? I'm having problems adding more carbs into the diet. I even modified the orange juice to 8 cups per day yet it only increases the carbs percentage to 27% while the protein stays the same (20%). At the same time, I want to avoid starchy food because they add weight. I don't know if sucrose is okay, maybe we do need some glucose in our diet? Or can we get by with consuming only fructose as carbs source?

Some stats that stand out:

Manganese: somehow it only says 27%, but it doesn't include matcha tea and raw cacao into the mix. Is this sufficient enough?
Magnesium: 84%. Good enough or add some more? The number one source is orange juice but I'm threading the fine balance between having great amount of nutrition and having too much calories (weight gain).
Folate: 65%.
Sodium, Zinc, Vitamin A, B12, Iron. They're all red and above the limit. Will there be major consequences of having too much of these? Tumor? Cancer? Alzheimer? Overworked thyroid and/or liver?
Omega-6: 31%. Isn't this bad, since it's often associated with PUFA?

Seems like I need to add more orange juice. Is having 8 glasses of orange juice + 2.5 glasses of milk normal for 5'9", 160-170lbs male Peatarians? Curious because I've never drank so much liquid in my life before discovering Ray Peat diet.

Any input, tip, and advice is appreciated!! :) Thank you for being so helpful

 

[cantstoppeating]

You haven't really provided anything worth 'critiquing'. This isn't a bodybuilding forum where you post your goal and get suggestions for what to eat. You already know about the common foods to eat, the next part is about measuring their effects.

Peating is about raising metabolism as measured by pulse and temp. What is your pulse and temp?

 

[marcar72]

I'd say your cronometer values are skewed somehow. 600% Iron and 11xx% Vitamin A? How is that? Something isn't adding up I'd say... :2cents

 

[Strongbad]

Yeah, even Cronometer has a sign-up disclaimer that its content calculator is approximation at best, so it's not to be taken too literally.

I need to buy a temp meter and BPM wrist band. That's my next goal.

I immediately found out that the new modified Peat diet is too much for me. 5 meals a day, 5 glasses of orange juice and 2.5 glasses of milk are too much of a chore. I understand that we need 2:1 carb/protein ratio but I can only drink so much orange juice per day without feeling bloated. Today marks my first (one) week of Peat Diet, and I see my washboard abs disappear before my own eyes. It's very depressing, and I can see why some people are struggling with weight loss via Peat Diet. I used to have very visible muscle tones with veins and everything. Now I look somewhat puffy muscular with all the muscle definitions gone and somewhat bigger waist.

It sucks that in order for the body to be "optimal" thyroid-wise I have to lose the healthy look of my body (V-shape, toned/defined muscles). Can we have the best of both worlds?

I think I have to find a food replacement for Orange Juice. Preferably in much smaller, more-concentrated and solid edible form but with similar nutritional content. The amount of OJ I've taken so far has made me stomach store so much liquid, hence disappearing abs and bigger waistline. I also have to reduce the amount of milk I drink, finding something in smaller, more concentrated substitute, too.

 

[mt_dreams]

You may wish to forget about looking toned for the next couple of months until things normalize. There are posts from members who appear to want the same kind of thing you are after. Search for posts from vision of strength, just to name one.

I would change out some of the dairy fat (from butter & whole milk) for coconut oil. This may require you to look after your vitamin A & K from something else, but it''s the leaner fat. If you want to take it a step further, look into mct oil, which is a supped up version of coconut oil.

If you can't tolerate the liquid, look to mix in some frozen oj concentrate into things like yogurt & cottage cheese. Also if your hitting your nutritional targets, don't be afraid to take in more honey. You can also make solid forms of carbs & diary protein with things like panna cotta or ray's ice cream recipe. I would not recommend low liquid levels for the purpose of seeing veins, etc, as your cells need the liquid to repair themselves.

I can't speak for others as weight gain seems common in the forum, but after being on the diet for a year and keeping estrogen & pufa intake to a minimum, my body started becoming toned all by itself. It helped that this is my natural body type as i had abs even in my early teens without ever exercising.

 

[tomisonbottom]

Welcome strongbad. Mt_dreams and Tara provided excellent suggestions and I can't think of anything further to add at this time. I did want to tell you that I've grown new hair on my head and 1.25 inches in height since discovering Peat's work. This has happened gradually for me over a year and a half. I didn't use dhea because I'm female (it makes me grow facial hair) but I have used pregnenolone as part of my Peat inspired approach. I'm a 45 year old female coming from a low carb paleo diet background. My goal was not to grow hair or grow taller it just happened.

Wow, that's amazing! How much pregnenolone do you take?

 

[Blossom]

I used between 500-1000 mg per most days for about a year. Currently more normal doses like 100 mg works fine. I take this amount most days but I've also taken breaks from it too. Usually if I go for more than a week I can feel that I need it again.

 

[beachbum]

I was woundering if you got back to your weight you mentioned in another post..160 lbs.