How Did You Lose Weight On A Ray Peat Diet?

[ecstatichamster]

i'm losing weight now.

I'm at about 26% BMI.

I'm eating eggs, nonfat milk, orange juice, guava juice, coke, nonfat yogurt, rice, lean beef, gelatin. A few butter cookies as a cheat.

I slowly lose weight. I am down about 4 pounds over 2 weeks. But it's real weight loss. Maybe 6 or 8 pounds. And expect to be at 175 in about 3 or 4 months. It's low fat and not being hungry that helps. Keeps cortisol at bay.

Well, that didn't work out. I'm at 196 right now. But I feel pretty good.

my diet is milk, cheese, OJ, some meat, a few cookies...I'm not really low fat at all. I eat a lot of sugar.

My high was 217 or so. Now I seem to be slowly losing again. It took a long time. I am not trying to lose weight specifically as my priorities are metabolic. We shall see.

 

[revenant]

How many calories are people eating?

I sure hope this idea of "eat more & ramp up metabolism" works, would be nice to eat more than 2,000 kcal for a change (let alone 4,000 kcal like some). I'm a 5'9" male, about normal weight and ate 1,500 kcal per day for months, which is doable but not pleasant. Steady weight loss for sure, but then it all came back very quickly when going back to 2,000 kcal.

Oops I meant 5'11" or 6'. Very inaccurate system! Or do you use half-inches too?

 

[Runenight201]

There are outstanding responses in this thread and I have appreciated everyone's input.

I've posted this in other places but I hope it helps someone out there. It seems an important principle here is protein. Ray recommends 80-100 g per day and that fits well with just about everyone else's recommendation regarding how much protein one ought to be getting per day. If say at least 100 g protein per day is a reasonable goal, then there are only two other maco-nutrient variables that can be controlled - carbs and fat (sorry for captain obvious). I believe calories matter but have discovered in my own case that the mixture of carbs and fat can influence how much weight we retain over a given period of time. I also agree that starch can have negative effects as far as weight gain so I try and limit that as much as possible. Mashed potatoes do not seem to carry the same weight-gaining consequences for me as flour-based foods.

I found two types of diet work well for losing body fat and have had great success - low carb/high fat (keto/Atkins/Paleo) - these work well at first but over time it seems your stress hormones and thyroid function will go against you. High carb/low fat (what I am on now) - the trick here is to keep fat somewhat low and it took me several months and some luck to figure this out. I've found that if you mix the two systems at the same time (higher carbs and higher fat at a given meal e.g., pizza being a prime example of such food), even at reasonable calories the body will get into a weird/confused metabolic state where it will retain water for days at a time. When I first went hard core with the Ray Peat stuff (mid last summer), I was drinking lots more milk along with things like OJ and I quickly gained 24 lbs in a couple of months yet my calories and exercise were entirely reasonable for what should have been a prescription for losing body fat (e.g., lots of calcium, lower calories, good protein intake).

I made one small shift by accident, and I saw an immediate and dramatic change. I went from 8 glasses of 1% milk and 1 glass of OJ per day to 4 glasses of milk and 4 glasses of OJ per day (the accident was I wanted to naturally increase vitamin C so I was forced to back off the milk). Both of these diets 8 milk/1Oj and 4 milk/4 OJ were EXACTLY the same calorically but one of them caused me to retain water. I lost 14 lbs in about 10 days after going 4 milk/4OJ. (Note: I used gelatin to replace the protein I was getting from the milk). There were days on the higher milk regimen were I ate 1500 calories or less but still gained on the scale the next day. Since I usually eat a burger each day that has 20 g of fat, the two systems I am describing here only differ by about 10 g of fat per day. In the 8 milk system, I was getting about 20 g of fat from milk for a total of 40 per day to the 4 milk system which was about 10 g of fat from milk for a total of 30 per day. I don't think reducing the fat by 10 g per day was the biggest issue but it seems mixing it all day long with the associated carbohydrates caused me to gain weight.

There are people posting in this thread that low carb and high fat works for losing weight and I agree with that because my anecdotal experience supports that. There are others posting in this thread that high carb and low fat works for losing weight and I agree with that as my anecdotal experience also supports that. It seems combining those two systems within too close of proximity of each other (e.g., mixing carbs and fat all day long), causes weight-gain problems for me. I believe it may be possible to alternate systems - perhaps go one meal at higher fat while limiting carbs and eating another meal at higher carbs while limiting fat. Another strategy might be to alternate days or weeks at high carb low fat, and high fat low carb.

My current diet and workout routine is similar to what @Amarsh213 posted above and I am getting similar results.

Milk is weird.

I use it as a last resort food, only when I'm certain that I don't want meat, starch, fruit, sugar, or water/tea/coffee.

When I used milk for a substantial amount of calories, many problems were had.