I'm Trying Separate Meals - Carbs Or Fat Not Both

[ecstatichamster]

Just started. Wish me luck :)

 

[charlie]

Prepare for the wow factor.

 

[michael94]

What are some example of new meals you’re planning as opposed to what you would gofor in the past -

 

[TeaRex14]

The all fat meals won't work most likely. You won't be able to maintain a steady blood glucose throughout the day, and assuming you aren't eating pure animal fat, you'll most likely be consuming fat with protein, but without carbs, which can cause a stress response. But I'd be curious to see what happens, let us know.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Today:

1. Started with honey, orange juice.

2. Later, egg and full fat cheese

3. Later, juice and dates

4. Later, potatoes, very lean lamb

5. Later, stewed fruit

Interestingly, my temperatures stayed up much higher than I’d thought they would. After the egg and cheese, I felt like I wanted carbs but I didn’t have any, and I did not have a stress reaction (my temperatures stayed around 99F.)

 

[LiveWire]

Isn’t ‘wanting carbs’ indicative of stress or at the very least a prelude to stress if not satisfied, where the subsequent stress was perhaps more subtle than you were expecting, leading you to believe there was no stress?

Carb craving is one of the surest way of indicating hypoglycemia, and hypoglycemia doesn’t just magically go away, the body will get the carbs it wants and needs, with or without you.

I understand what you’re trying the do, the Randle cycle theory is very tempting to blame for weight gain, but this seems to me a little bit too simplistic of an interpretation. But I’ll keep watching.

 

[olive]

There needs to be a 4 hour window between carb meals and fat meals.
Carbs should be consumed in the day when insulin sensitivity is at its peak. Leaving fats for night time consumption.

 

[aquaman]

There needs to be a 4 hour window between carb meals and fat meals.
Carbs should be consumed in the day when insulin sensitivity is at its peak. Leaving fats for night time consumption.

Do you do this way of eating?

 

[olive]

Do you do this way of eating?

Yes.
In the mornings I eat pineapple/papaya, spinach, purple sweet potato, coconut water.
At night I eat shellfish/fish/red meat, coconut oil, cocoa/dark chocolate.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Isn’t ‘wanting carbs’ indicative of stress or at the very least a prelude to stress if not satisfied, where the subsequent stress was perhaps more subtle than you were expecting, leading you to believe there was no stress?

Carb craving is one of the surest way of indicating hypoglycemia, and hypoglycemia doesn’t just magically go away, the body will get the carbs it wants and needs, with or without you.

I understand what you’re trying the do, the Randle cycle theory is very tempting to blame for weight gain, but this seems to me a little bit too simplistic of an interpretation. But I’ll keep watching.

I felt that wanting carbs is a symptom of hypoglycemia, yes. However, in my past experience my temperature falls dramatically when I’m in a stress reaction with hypoglycemia and this time it did not. It even rose.

 

[ecstatichamster]

There needs to be a 4 hour window between carb meals and fat meals.
Carbs should be consumed in the day when insulin sensitivity is at its peak. Leaving fats for night time consumption.

That makes sense. Thank you.

 

[aquaman]

Yes.
In the mornings I eat pineapple/papaya, spinach, purple sweet potato, coconut water.
At night I eat shellfish/fish/red meat, coconut oil, cocoa/dark chocolate.

Interesting.

How many meals?

 

[danielbb]

This is too tempting for me not to post. Let me start by saying I am not trying to convince anyone of anything.

I came to know Ray Peat because I discovered by accident that sugar was good for me. He is one of the few people out there who does not demonize sugar. That said, sugar plus fat (at the same sitting) is a bad idea and I learned this the hard way. I believe Ray is right about the toxic substances in our food supply - namely 1) PUFA, 2) Iron, and 3) Soy. Those are easily worked around. When it comes to dieting and shedding body fat, I believe some of Ray's ideas do not make sense. After coming here and listening to his videos, he shared the observation that those in Eastern-bloc countries were obese because they were eating high starch diets in his opinion and in those places like Finland were lean because of a milk-based diet. I am paraphrasing that but others here have heard him say the same thing. I am willing to try anything to optimize health and get lean so I went hard-core with Ray's ideas like getting most of my protein from milk and lots of carbohydrates from things like orange juice. There are links here that post the so-called Peat diet and I was following that to a tee with no mistakes. Counting my calories and working out everyday. Started gaining weight and could not for the life of me figure what was going on given a caloric load that was often below 1600 calories per day. Gained about 20 lbs in about 4-6 weeks time and switched to 1% milk but that still did not stabilize things for me. Then a thought occurred to me. Is it possible that each of the individual elements of some food source you consume could be healthy in and of themselves yet the combination be a problem? Could the combination itself be inflammatory even though the individual elements are healthy?

This thought caused me to reconsider the Randle-Cycle and when I thought about that, it made perfect sense what was going on. When you consume fat, it shuts off the ability to burn carbs. This was discovered in 1963 and to my knowledge has never been disproven. Its been re-studied and the science is still valid. So I got the idea, what would happen if I merely separated the time between when I consumed fat and sugar (any high carbohydrate source). So I started experimenting. I like to load carbs at night for sleep quality and hormonal reasons. So, I decided to go low carb for breakfast such as bacon and eggs. I usually skip lunch. A high fat meal at breakfast like that usually supplies enough energy to get me to my carb-only meals at night. When I put this system in place, the weight came off just as fast if not faster than when I put it on. It occurred to me that the mixture of fat and carbs is inflammatory and the weight gain is mostly water-weight. Some don't see the problem with water-weight but I believe it is unhealthy because if you are burning energy properly there should be no gain from one day to the next. Here is some stuff I posted elsewhere about recent Randle-cycle studies:

The Randle cycle revisited: a new head for an old hat

Some here don't believe in the Randle-Cycle effects but there was another scientific approach that got to the same issues. Doctor Kessler wrote a book about the mixture of sugar and fat and salt in the American food supply. They used brain scans to prove the effects on certain parts of the brain and also did hormonal studies. They found that these mixtures are designed to shut off your hunger signals and light up your reward signals in the brain. My only issue with Dr. Kessler's work is he tends to demonize sugar. I am suggesting that our bodies can perfectly use either fat or sugar for energy. Anecdotally, sugar (in all its forms including starch) has been wonderful for me. Fat works great by itself. The combination is lethal in my opinion. Here is a link to Dr. Kessler's work (5.99 on Kindle) for those who may be skeptical of the Randle-Cycle:
https://www.amazon.com/End-Overeati...sprefix=david+kessler,aps,143&sr=8-2-fkmrnull

Practical ways to implement this system:

Go low-carb/high fat one day, and go high carb/low fat the nest day.
I like low carb at one meal and being conservative, I try and separate fat and carbs by 12 hours but frankly think that is too conservative. My wife has been getting good results by merely not mixing carbs and fat at the same meal. I've also alternated meals without penalty.

I believe there are fat/carb mixing thresholds. Using an Atkins-style low carb plan of about 30 carbs per day as a model that does work to lose body fat, and assuming 3 meals per day, that conservatively allows about 10 carbs at each meal containing fat. That number has never failed me. Low carb vegetables can be mixed with any fat meal without penalty or thinking. All the low carb systems like Atkins, Paleo, keto, and so forth allow vegetables. Using 10 as a guide, you could consume 1 cup of strawberries, 1 cup watermelon, 1 cup raspberries, or 1/2 cup blueberries and stay below that threshold. Look, if you are 25 years old and ripped, your threshold is probably higher than this. Of course, everyone may have different mixing thresholds. I believe a small amount of carbs like low carb fruit or vegetables should be consumed with each high fat meal. Of course, you can also mix your fat with other fat sources like meat and cheese, meat and nuts, nuts and cheese, etc.

If you are consuming a high carb meal like pasta, then I think any added fat since it provides energy at almost twice the value of carbs, a conservative fat threshold for a high carb meal might be 4/5 grams or so of fat. Everyone can experiment and easily find out what are reasonable mixing thresholds (e.g., after a given load of fat and carbs was there any water weight on the scale overnight).

Lets look at Italian food examples, since I love it and it provides different approaches to consider:

If you boil your meat in the sauce, for example, most of the grease boils to the top and is spooned off so I would consider this type of meat low fat. Then, we have the carbs in the pasta. No problem. Here's where things start to go wrong for people. Most load their pasta with cheese. I am ok with skipping the cheese. There are no-fat cheeses out there that can be used that are a very reasonable substitute for high-fat cheeses. Also, most load their bread with butter. I am ok skipping the bread but if you must eat bread with it, you can skip the butter and season the bread with garlic salt and herbs as an example. Another strategy is to dramatically reduce the carb content of the meal. This can be done by using spiralized zucchini which is an excellent pasta substitute. Here with a much lower carb content, you may be able to increase your fat threshold for a given meal.

How about pizza? Who does not love that?

A couple of strategies:
There are all types of youtube recipes using zucchini or cauliflower-based crusts. These dramatically lower the carbs in pizza and thus would allow more fat as toppings. These are ok but I find them unsatisfying.

I like regular pizza crust made from flour. I make this, add the sauce, and use no-fat mozzarella cheese and Kraft is the only one I've found who makes this. Entirely satisfying and about 90% as good as regular cheese. My wife and I like green pepper and mushrooms as toppings on our pizza. No fat whatsoever. No performance penalties on the scale the next day.

It actually is quite easy to avoid mixing. No silly low-carb rules or low fat rules to follow. Just decide what type of meal you feel like eating and plan accordingly. All taste buds can be accommodated. Only you know what you like to eat.

 

[michael94]

Every time I hear randle I think of that lizard from monsters inc

 

[LUH 3417]

Yes.
In the mornings I eat pineapple/papaya, spinach, purple sweet potato, coconut water.
At night I eat shellfish/fish/red meat, coconut oil, cocoa/dark chocolate.

Wouldn’t your night time meal lead to hypoglycemia? High protein without carbs?

 

[ecstatichamster]

@danielbb thank you for that exceptional post.

A few observations.

1. I bought the Kessler book, and will review

2. I think Dr. Peat is right about perfusion and digestion. I think a *little* fat with starch is really important.

3. I have found enzymes in cheese very allergenic. I can only tolerate cheese made from animal rennet. No fat or low fat cheese fails. I suppose pizza can be done that is "red" and does not have cheese at all. So a *little* fat with your breadsticks or bread is really important. Not a problem with potatoes I think, if well cooked, as the starch granules aren't dry and would not persorb, but flour based starches are bad this way and you must have a little fat with them.

4. I love your post, thank you again!

 

[ecstatichamster]

My day today is:

well cooked potatoes with a teaspoon of olive oil and vinegar
one egg fried in butter
orange juice
coffee with collagen and sugar

So the fat above isn't insignificant, but it isn't what I'd call a "fatty meal". Or is it?

I'll see how things go.

 

[Cirion]

So, it seems like whether you have fat or carbs at night isn't actually a big deal as long as total carb intake on a day to day basis is met, given that @olive and @danielbb both do it differently but still feel good? I myself tend to like the idea of carbs at night personally.

 

[Cirion]

My day today is:

well cooked potatoes with a teaspoon of olive oil and vinegar
one egg fried in butter
orange juice
coffee with collagen and sugar

So the fat above isn't insignificant, but it isn't what I'd call a "fatty meal". Or is it?

I'll see how things go.

Depends how unhealthy you are. The threshold for fat intolerance can literally be anywhere from a couple grams of fat to 20 grams of fat in a meal. For me, just a handful of grams <5 of fat and I feel the effects of Randle (I hate that Randle guy!!! LOL)

So, for me, your meal would have been too fatty. Whether it is for you, who knows.

 

[YourUniverse]

I remember you wrote you dont tolerate calcium well, and thats unfortunate. Ive found calcium to surrogate nicely for saturated fat for slowing digestion on a low-fat diet