If Burning Fat Is Bad, How Do You Lose Weight?

[lvysaur]

I'm a newbie to Peat's ideas, but many of them make sense to me.

However, if the release of fatty acids is bad for your body, how can you realistically expect to lose fat? After all, one of the main goals of any diet is to have a lean body, and if that's not possible on a Peat diet, I don't see how I can reconcile the other benefits.

On that point, what does Peat think of exercise? In particular:

- low intensity long duration running (marathonners)
- high intensity short duration running (sprinters)
- low weight high repetition resistance ("bodybuilders")
- and high weight low repetition resistance ("powerlifters")

 

[Blossom]

This is not your typical weight loss diet at all. Some people lose weight, some maintain and some (gasp) even gain a little. It's more about restoring optimal metabolism which often requires repair work and putting aside the numbers on the scale issue for a while(imo). The idea is that when our metabolism is optimal everything else falls into place. For me that place might be a different weight than the one from when I was unhealthy. Our culture equates thinness with health but really healthy people do come in all shapes and sizes. The number on my scale is different but I'm really enjoying my new feminine curves! I'm pretty sure Peat only recommends concentric exercise and things like yoga but I haven't explored this topic much yet.

 

[charlie]

Ivysaur,

If you are hypo-metabolic any kind of movement or exercise that lowers the metabolism is going to be a burden. As much as I loved lifting weights, I had to give it up. I lifted and then tracked temps/pulse and it would take days for my basal metabolic rate to recover to what it was before the lifting session. I also tried much lighter sessions with not much better results. Mittir said something about after 40 minutes of a brisk walk there was no T3 in the blood. Easy walks in a visually stimulating place can be regenerating.

 

[j.]

You lose it, but slowly.

Every day you lose fat from your adipose tissues. So you have to store less fat than you get rid of. One of the strategies to do this is limiting the release of insulin by making fruits or fruit juices your main source of carbs.

Regarding exercise, part of the damage comes from releasing polyunsaturated fatty acids when you run out of sugar for fuel. But if your stored fats are saturated, you'll do a lot less damage.

 

[Mittir]

At rest muscle mostly burns fatty acids. Body will not stop burning fat.
By increasing metabolism and body temperature a person should burn
more fat during rest. PUFA storage is the reason for limiting free fatty acid release.
If someone has mostly saturated fat as storage they can get away with
burning large amount of FFA. A healthy liver will continuously detoxify
released PUFA and excrete through kidney. It is more like handling
a "toxic chemical spill". It takes about 2-3 years for body to
achieve a good ratio of Saturated fat to PUFA by restricting PUFA intake.
http://www.functionalps.com/ is focused on Ray Peat's ideas in Gym setting.

 

[lvysaur]

blossom - I had that impression about the Peat diet. I'm not ready to become curvy, though, seeing as I'm a man.

charlie - Is exercise actually hypo-metabolic? I thought it was the opposite. Was your pulse decreasing following exercise?

j. - Thanks for the input. I had been taking krill oil capsules (phospholipid-bound omega 3 fatty acids) for around 1.5 years. Keep in mind that these aren't as readily oxidized as fish oil fats, due to the high levels of naturally occurring antioxidants (astaxanthin). How much damage do you wager I did with these?

Mittir - Thanks. Do you know anything about the "priority" of fatty acid storage? Do PUFAs get stored first, when the body gets to choose between SFAs, MUFAs, and PUFAs? I've read (not from Peat) that women tend to accumulate omega3 fats in their lower body, for fetal neural development. Is there any truth to that?

Thanks for that site too, lifting weights/fitness is something I'm just not willing to give up.

 

[charlie]

charlie - Is exercise actually hypo-metabolic? I thought it was the opposite. Was your pulse decreasing following exercise?

Yes. It's gonna be a metabolic hit no matter which way you cut it. Healthier people are going to recover much faster then hypo-metabolic people.

Yes, pulse and basal temperature decreased.

Some people like Mittir are losing weight and getting healthy by doing less and not stressing things. All this doing more more more is not healthy.

 

[Blossom]

I don't think you have to worry then ivysaur!!! A Peat style approach will not give you feminine curves.

 

[j.]

The antioxidants might be used more immediately, the fat that you eat could be stored and potentially be released 4 years later. The antioxidants you ate with the fat might be gone by then.

How much damage they do depends on how healthy you are and how good is your liver to handle them.

I also don't like the idea of giving up exercise, and I think the best one could do to minimize or eliminate the damage is avoiding polyunsaturated fats. I think for the right person, done the right way, exercise could be beneficial. Training like crazy when you aren't healthy is going to make things worse.

 

[Mittir]

I had been taking krill oil capsules (phospholipid-bound omega 3 fatty acids) for around 1.5 years. Keep in mind that these aren't as readily oxidized as fish oil fats, due to the high levels of naturally occurring antioxidants (astaxanthin). How much damage do you wager I did with these?

Mittir - Thanks. Do you know anything about the "priority" of fatty acid storage? Do PUFAs get stored first, when the body gets to choose between SFAs, MUFAs, and PUFAs? I've read (not from Peat) that women tend to accumulate omega3 fats in their lower body, for fetal neural development. Is there any truth to that?

Thanks for that site too, lifting weights/fitness is something I'm just not willing to give up.

PUFA does very little harm when it is used as energy as soon as it is ingested without
getting stored. It is the stored PUFA that does all the damages.
Here is a RP quote on fish oil

Some of the important antiinflammatory effects of fish oil result from the oxidized oils, rather than the unchanged oils (Sethi, 2002; Chaudhary, et al., 2004). These oils are so unstable that they begin to spontaneously oxidize even before they reach the bloodstream
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fishoil.shtml

My guess is that small amount of fish oil ingestion would not contribute
significantly to stored fat. But oxidized fish oil is both anti-inflammatory and
immunosuppressive. I do not know if krill is different than regular fish oil.
EPA and DHA from all fish oil should have same metabolic path.
PUFA from vegetable oil gets metabolised quicker than most saturated fatty acids,
exceptions are medium chain saturated fat (coconut oil). IIRC short chain fatty acids
get metabolised very quickly. Longer chain saturated fat metabolism is very slow.
RP mentioned that metabolism speed of MCT is similar to sugar.
MUFA from olive oil gets metabolised quicker than cream fat.
Quick metabolism of PUFA is possibly the reason that it takes several
decades to cause serious health issues in average people.
RP cites a French study on pregnant females supplementing fish oil
that showed adverse effects in children's brain.
RP thinks concentric muscle building exercises are very beneficial.
Here is a link to all RPs articles and audio interview
http://raypeat.com/articles/
http://www.functionalps.com/blog/2011/0 ... nterviews/

 

[BobbyDukes]

I had been taking krill oil capsules (phospholipid-bound omega 3 fatty acids) for around 1.5 years. Keep in mind that these aren't as readily oxidized as fish oil fats, due to the high levels of naturally occurring antioxidants (astaxanthin). How much damage do you wager I did with these?

Mittir - Thanks. Do you know anything about the "priority" of fatty acid storage? Do PUFAs get stored first, when the body gets to choose between SFAs, MUFAs, and PUFAs? I've read (not from Peat) that women tend to accumulate omega3 fats in their lower body, for fetal neural development. Is there any truth to that?

Thanks for that site too, lifting weights/fitness is something I'm just not willing to give up.

PUFA does very little harm when it is used as energy as soon as it is ingested without
getting stored. It is the stored PUFA that does all the damages.
Here is a RP quote on fish oil

Some of the important antiinflammatory effects of fish oil result from the oxidized oils, rather than the unchanged oils (Sethi, 2002; Chaudhary, et al., 2004). These oils are so unstable that they begin to spontaneously oxidize even before they reach the bloodstream
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fishoil.shtml

My guess is that small amount of fish oil ingestion would not contribute
significantly to stored fat. But oxidized fish oil is both anti-inflammatory and
immunosuppressive. I do not know if krill is different than regular fish oil.
EPA and DHA from all fish oil should have same metabolic path.
PUFA from vegetable oil gets metabolised quicker than most saturated fatty acids,
exceptions are medium chain saturated fat (coconut oil). IIRC short chain fatty acids
get metabolised very quickly. Longer chain saturated fat metabolism is very slow.
RP mentioned that metabolism speed of MCT is similar to sugar.
MUFA from olive oil gets metabolised quicker than cream fat.
Quick metabolism of PUFA is possibly the reason that it takes several
decades to cause serious health issues in average people.
RP cites a French study on pregnant females supplementing fish oil
that showed adverse effects in children's brain.
RP thinks concentric muscle building exercises are very beneficial.
Here is a link to all RPs articles and audio interview
http://raypeat.com/articles/
http://www.functionalps.com/blog/2011/0 ... nterviews/

RE: your PUFA comment..

So, in theory, if I eat anything (cake, PUFA, grease, mayonnaise, etc), as long as my calorie intake isn't above the maximum point of my daily calorific requirements, and, my body burns what I am putting into my body, there is no harm done? Not saying that cake and mayonnaise is something I am considering, but interesting all the same. Perhaps overeating isn't such a good thing? Your body will store that nasty crap. Another reason to keep fat low. But then, it's impossible to gauge what your body truly needs in terms of calories. Appetite is hardly reliable when your limbic system is making you salivitate at the thought of sinking your teeth into a pizza, in moments of human weakness (just stay away from pizza)

 

[thebigpeatowski]

From RP's FATS AND DEGENERATION:

"Several studies suggest that a high degree of unsaturation in the fats is fundamentally related to the aging process, since long lived species have a lower degree of unsaturation in their fats. Caloric restriction decreases the age-related accumulation of the fatty acids with 4 and 5 double bonds."

 

[Peat's_Girl]

blossom - I had that impression about the Peat diet. I'm not ready to become curvy, though, seeing as I'm a man.

LOL...

 

[YuraCZ]

At rest muscle mostly burns fatty acids. Body will not stop burning fat.
By increasing metabolism and body temperature a person should burn
more fat during rest. PUFA storage is the reason for limiting free fatty acid release.
If someone has mostly saturated fat as storage they can get away with
burning large amount of FFA. A healthy liver will continuously detoxify
released PUFA and excrete through kidney. It is more like handling
a "toxic chemical spill". It takes about 2-3 years for body to
achieve a good ratio of Saturated fat to PUFA by restricting PUFA intake.
http://www.functionalps.com/ is focused on Ray Peat's ideas in Gym setting.

It depends how much fat you have. There is a big difference if you are 50 years old hypothyroid woman with 40% of body fat or 25 years old healthy guy with 10% of body fat..

 

[Parsifal]

That's an interesting topic and I'm starting to ask myself some questions around it lately:

- It seems that adrenaline helps to loose fat by increasing free fatty acids, but it seems that it also raise cortisol and cortisol is said to make people put weight like what stress is doing? So why do people taking amphetamines loose massive amounts of weight (they should gain a lot of weight due to the raise in cortisol)? Also, why do people with high adrenaline have more energy while Peat says that it is anti-metabolic? It seems to be a paradox.

- Slim people that eat a lot are considered as hyperthyroid and thyroid hormone is said to help to loose fat so I'm wondering if that increases free fatty acids which seems to increase stress hormones and to be antimetabolic (that is why people here are taking niacinamide?), in that case is the effect the same as adrenaline?

- People here say that muscles burn fat when we are resting. Is that fat FFA? What else burns fat, the brain or the liver to convert it to glycogen/glucose/pyruvate?

- Why do we store fat? Because of insuline resistance? So basically eating fruits will never make us fat because fructose doesn't need insulin to be absorbed? Why is fructose blamed in obesity and fatty liver in that case?

- Why are stored PUFAs bad? How do they act in the body if they are in an inactive stored form?

- There is a topic about PUFA depletion here that could be depleted in 1 month: viewtopic.php?t=4954&start=255 how could it be so fast?

- Baby humans are very fat compared to other baby animals and it is said to contribute to our bigger brains by ketosis in our youth and leading to myelinization.
Baby chimps are very slim. Are the babies fat because of our high PUFA intake? It seems strange to grow a brain by entering in a stress pathway if we have to raise adrenaline to loose the fat that we had when born so that it can enter the brain to allow it to grow... I'm also wondering why we can heal people with epillepsy with a ketogenic diet and why does it increase the CMRO2 in the brain while uncoupling it from the cerebral bloodflow?

It seems nearly impossible to avoid PUFAs in our diet (or maybe we could by eating protein powders or very lean meat/fat free milk with fruits, would not it be a powerful healing diet by the way?) so maybe we should consider how to burn fat more efficiently to avoid the PUFAs in our tissues and understand how to do that?

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=32&v=c62Aqdlzvqk the girl in this video will never age because she doesn't store PUFA's so has the potential to have a perfect metabolism?

 

[James IV]

In very simple terms; Burning fat is not bad. Burning PUFA is bad. By burning we mean utilizing the fat as an energy substrate. You can "excrete" fat via the liver without "burning" it for energy. A healthy metabolism will preferentially "burn" saturated/monounsaturated fats and "excrete" polyunsaturated fats. An unhealthy metabolism will generally try to store the PUFA because it lack the energy to excrete them safely.

 

[tara]

post 99452 - the girl in this video will never age because she doesn't store PUFA's so has the potential to have a perfect metabolism?

Fat has other uses in the body than just as reserve fuel.
And reserve fuel is really useful for sustaining energy.
Sustaining energy is how we combat aging.
I rather doubt her situation amounts to not aging.

 

[James IV]

post 99473

post 99452 - the girl in this video will never age because she doesn't store PUFA's so has the potential to have a perfect metabolism?

Fat has other uses in the body than just as reserve fuel.
And reserve fuel is really useful for sustaining energy.
Sustaining energy is how we combat aging.
I rather doubt her situation amounts to not aging.

Yes. In fact her situation probably accelerates aging. She is burning all the energy she consumes. So she lacks the raw materials to constantly "rebuild" herself on a cellular level, which is essentially what dictates how quickly we age.

 

[Parsifal]

post 99462 In very simple terms; Burning fat is not bad. Burning PUFA is bad. By burning we mean utilizing the fat as an energy substrate. You can "excrete" fat via the liver without "burning" it for energy. A healthy metabolism will preferentially "burn" saturated/monounsaturated fats and "excrete" polyunsaturated fats. An unhealthy metabolism will generally try to store the PUFA because it lack the energy to excrete them safely.

Thanks for your reply. How can you promote excretion by the liver of the PUFAs? Why do we take niacinamide to block FFA?

 

[James IV]

post 99484

post 99462 In very simple terms; Burning fat is not bad. Burning PUFA is bad. By burning we mean utilizing the fat as an energy substrate. You can "excrete" fat via the liver without "burning" it for energy. A healthy metabolism will preferentially "burn" saturated/monounsaturated fats and "excrete" polyunsaturated fats. An unhealthy metabolism will generally try to store the PUFA because it lack the energy to excrete them safely.

Thanks for your reply. How can you promote excretion by the liver of the PUFAs? Why do we take niacinamide to block FFA?

Anything that heals (not just stimulates) metabolic function will help increase stored pufa excretion, as long as you are not consuming pufa. I would not recommend Niacinamide, if your goal is reduction in total bodyfat.