Low/No Fat Diet Without Weight Loss

[iPeat]

Its definitely fat. I’m in the same boat. 6ft, with this thick tyre around my mid section, weighing in at a mighty 210 ibs (whereas, previously, all of my life prior to Peat I weighed 170ibs). When i temporarily go low carb, my belly evens out slightly, but the pad of fat is still there and so far, nothing I have tried has made a dent at shifting it.

For me, over the past few years, the weight gain has been down to eating too much dietary fat (easily done on this approach to eating because fructose just doesn’t suffice for satiation, no matter how much you eat it), but also down to just eating too much fructose in general (which is directly shunted to the liver and fat production can increase further). And especially these things in combination, and along with high calories, because some of us on the forum unfortunately bought into this concept of ‘re-feeding’, and now we seem to be stuck with this added fat on our bodies.

One day I will work out this belly fat thing. I just don’t think I can make improvements in my health at all until, physically, I am in better shape to start building from a decent platform.



Well I’m six years PUFA depleted and the new formula of tovovit also has zero results for me (well, since the formula changed from the old one). The old formula used to heat me up significantly. I personally have doubts about what the new formulation does exactly.



How heavy are you? Yeah totally agree with all of that. And when you go through this detox phase, you can hammer your liver and kidneys if you’re not careful. Be careful guys.
You don’t want to end up like me with proteinuria (the degenerative start of my declining kidney health). Once your kidneys are fully gone, you are pretty much done. It’s game over. Experts don’t know what has caused my proteinuria but I’m convinced that years of PUFA depleting and the tissue toxicity released into my blood stream has taken its toll.

Are you currently using any vitamin E? I was using Unique E so I could basically overdose without spending a fortune, until I heard some chatter here that it isn't what it used to be. Now I just use small doses of TocoVit.

 

[redsun]

Didn't think of the fructose thing. I may try to lower that and see what happens. I am consuming a lot of fructose.

I actually just did the potato hack about a month ago. I did it for 2 weeks and lost 8 pounds. I just couldn't keep it up and gained everything back, to the pound, in 2 days of eating "normal."

That would be a good first step, also try including eggs for choline daily to help out your liver with all that fructose you have eaten. If you can manage 6 a day, that would be really good, but even 3 a day is a good and you can always increase it over time. If you can eat liver do that as it is packed with choline as well.

 

[Cirion]

How useful is vitamin E truly in negating PUFA?

How many grams of vitamin E does it take to negate the effects of 1 gram of PUFA? I'm sure it's not 1 gram to 1 gram, but just for the sake of argument, lets say it is... Now lets say someone has 25 lb of PUFA stored in their body, which is 25x450gram = 11,250 gram of PUFA (damn, that's painful to think about, and I probably have this much in me currently). Anyway, if you have 11,250 gram of PUFA and it takes 1 gram of vitamin E to prevent the oxidative damage from 1 gram of PUFA, this means over the course of losing 25 lb of pure PUFA fat would take 11,250 grams of vitamin E... that's a LOT!!

PUFA is a huge problem and Chris talks about it in his book, of course Ray does also, but yeah, PUFA is part of the reason why livers get fatty; it interferes with the ability to process fructose. Being fat makes it harder to process fructose, but he argues fructose is needed for cholesterol, processing glucose, and for generating CO2 and Ray Peat of course has many favorable quotes on fructose also for CO2 and metabolism (in fact he quotes RP in his book).

I think Haidut has talked about the Schute brother experiments where people were dosing like 6-8+ grams of VItamin E a day. These huge dosages might indeed be required if you're super saturated with PUFAs... Most people easily get 6-8 gram of PUFA a day even on a reduced PUFA diet, and if its a 1:1 mitigation ratio, that means those 6-8 gram of vitamin E would only mitigate the PUFA you ate that day, let alone PUFA from body fat stores which could easily be in the dozens of grams a day especially in a caloric deficit/stressful day =/

I do know that at one point Haidut briefly played with 2-3 gram or so of vitamin E a day as part of his high T experiment, and Ray considers vitamin E one of the safest supplements.

 

[corvetteseeker]

@redsun I agree with most of what you’re saying but just trying to reconcile what you are saying about starch with my own experience.

All other variable being the same, any time I have starch I gain weight the next day even if the amount of starch is small. It doesn’t matter if it’s bananas, sweet potatoes, potatoes, oatmeal, etc

I wish this wasn’t the case but it is. What gives?

 

[redsun]

@redsun I agree with most of what you’re saying but just trying to reconcile what you are saying about starch with my own experience.

All other variable being the same, any time I have starch I gain weight the next day even if the amount of starch is small. It doesn’t matter if it’s bananas, sweet potatoes, potatoes, oatmeal, etc

I wish this wasn’t the case but it is. What gives?

I mean weight gain the next day doesnt mean that much in and of itself. Starch is basically glucose and glucose spikes insulin but that alone wont do much especially when its very little. You may have an intolerance to certain or all starches because of their fibers due to compromised gut integrity and likewise can increase water retention. I find myself "heavier" when I have starch in the diet, but when I have no starch and basically little fiber I was less. The bulk of the food can be largely the reason. And that weight gain is not fat gain by any means.

 

[Mr. Sanders]

I'm just curious if anyone knows what the implications are of the situation where someone eats almost no fat, yet doesn't lose weight while in an overweight condition. Temps and pulse are ok with thyroid supplementation.

Diet consisting of mostly:
Strained, fat free yogurt
Jelly/jam
Milk (fat free)
Fruit juices
White sugar
Honey
Maple syrup
Candy
Occasional potatoes
Daily carrots
Coffee
Occasional Coca-Cola

Everything organic or as clean as possible.

And supplementation talked about a lot on this forum (as clean as I can find them)

Cronometer tags me around 2,500 calories. I'm 6 foot, 206 pounds. Gained a lot weight on a Peat-inspired diet over the course of 18 months only in my midsection and slight gynecomastia. I came from a Keto diet and great physical appearance (felt like crap).

Peat mentioned on a KMUD that some researcher/doctor (forget which) went on a zero fat diet and his weight stabilized much lower than when he started.

What does it mean when the weight loss doesn't happen, and in fact goes in the opposite direction or stays put?

this looks very straight forward.
how much protein are you getting on avg.
from your food list you're probably not even close to a minimal requirement.
don't get lost in the weeds.

 

[iPeat]

this looks very straight forward.
how much protein are you getting on avg.
from your food list you're probably not even close to a minimal requirement.
don't get lost in the weeds.

I actually just punched in my diet to Cronometer. I can't figure out how to share it. On mobile there doesn't seem to be a way to copy a link or anything. I'm getting 111 grams of protein, 1.8 grams of fat.

 

[OceanSpray]

When I did high sugar/fat, I gained a ton of weight. Even high sugar/low fat made me gain. Just a few tsps of coconut oil per day and some red meat once in awhile was enough to keep the gain going. My attempt now, is basically trying get my data intake to zero. Still not working after about 10 days.

If Peat diet made you fat, what makes you think it will make you lose fat. I don’t understand.

This may be blasphemous, but how about looking at the sugar part?

 

[Cirion]

I mean weight gain the next day doesnt mean that much in and of itself. Starch is basically glucose and glucose spikes insulin but that alone wont do much especially when its very little. You may have an intolerance to certain or all starches because of their fibers due to compromised gut integrity and likewise can increase water retention. I find myself "heavier" when I have starch in the diet, but when I have no starch and basically little fiber I was less. The bulk of the food can be largely the reason. And that weight gain is not fat gain by any means.

Water weight is very dangerous beyond just making you look like you're pregnant, because it means you added inflammation to your body. This is in fact half of my own problem -months and months of compounding water weight on TOP of fat gain. The increased inflammation promotes further fat gain, a vicious cycle. When cells swell up with water it increases estrogen and thus ultimately stress hormones, which lends itself ultimately to fat gain. Ray talks about this a bit.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

Just to mention something important that I read in a few studies on fructose: fructose lowers fatty acid oxidation to a much greater extent than glucose. As a forum member said here once, you can actually be in a mild ketosis almost all the time if you ingest just glucose instead of fructose. So it's less about fructose being very lipogenic and more about fructose being very inhibitoty to fat oxidation.

This inhibition of fat oxidation occurs in the liver as well, so it seems plausible that if one eats a significant amount of fat, the liver won't burn it, which can cause fat accumulation in it.

The studies showing that rats deficient in choline or methionine get fatty liver when they are fed a lot of sucrose draw the wrong conclusions. They even say that saturated fat causes toxic effects on the liver, which is diametrically opposite to reality. Saturated fats such as beef tallow prevent and heal liver disease, while PUFAs, such as corn oil, cause cirrhosis.

When you feed a diet rich in PUFA( which pretty much all studies regarding fructose do) to rats who are ingesting a lot of fructose and very little choline, the liver will not burn the PUFA or produce ketones from it the way it would with a very low fructose diet. That means all of those highly peroxidizable PUFAs will remain in the liver, where they will wreak havoc. The correct conclusion, as I see it, is that the liver is taking one for the team, as it usually does with things like endotoxin, estrogen, excessive vitamin A etc. If the liver had enough choline, it would be able to purge these PUFAs into the bloodstream, but then they damage other tissues that may not regenrate as easily as the liver does.

PUFAs generate ketones much more easily than saturated fats, so if a person is in fat burning mode, the liver can turn the PUFAs into ketones and purge them into the blood. Fructose is one of, if not the most anti-ketogenic sugar commonly present in the diet, so it makes sense that combining PUFA with fructose is a seriously bad idea, but ingesting any PUFA( without a lot of safe fats to negate them) is going to be bad.

Also, some liver fat,as long as it is saturated or monounsaturated, is safe and causes no oxidative stress to the liver. Since beef tallow is almost all sat. fat+ monouns. fat, then it's understandable that some( but not necessarily a lot of) safe fat in the liver is protective.

 

[Mr. Sanders]

Ray himself who is significantly smaller than you talks about feeling best at 150g protein.
Most performance based guidelines are a minimum of 1g/lb of body weight.
I can confirm my n=1 sample does drastically better in every way including weight loss when my protein
consumption is 1.25-1.5g/lb

At 206 pounds you're in the 50% deficiency range for protein deficiency.
If I were 206 and say I had a goal weight of 180
I'd be hitting 150-200g protein daily no exceptions.

As you progress you'll find a number that works for you in that range
possibly even a little higher.

 

[Cirion]

Just to mention something important that I read in a few studies on fructose: fructose lowers fatty acid oxidation to a much greater extent than glucose. As a forum member said here once, you can actually be in a mild ketosis almost all the time if you ingest just glucose instead of fructose. So it's less about fructose being very lipogenic and more about fructose being very inhibitoty to fat oxidation.

This inhibition of fat oxidation occurs in the liver as well, so it seems plausible that if one eats a significant amount of fat, the liver won't burn it, which can cause fat accumulation in it.

The studies showing that rats deficient in choline or methionine get fatty liver when they are fed a lot of sucrose draw the wrong conclusions. They even say that saturated fat causes toxic effects on the liver, which is diametrically opposite to reality. Saturated fats such as beef tallow prevent and heal liver disease, while PUFAs, such as corn oil, cause cirrhosis.

When you feed a diet rich in PUFA( which pretty much all studies regarding fructose do) to rats who are ingesting a lot of fructose and very little choline, the liver will not burn the PUFA or produce ketones from it the way it would with a very low fructose diet. That means all of those highly peroxidizable PUFAs will remain in the liver, where they will wreak havoc. The correct conclusion, as I see it, is that the liver is taking one for the team, as it usually does with things like endotoxin, estrogen, excessive vitamin A etc. If the liver had enough choline, it would be able to purge these PUFAs into the bloodstream, but then they damage other tissues that may not regenrate as easily as the liver does.

PUFAs generate ketones much more easily than saturated fats, so if a person is in fat burning mode, the liver can turn the PUFAs into ketones and purge them into the blood. Fructose is one of, if not the most anti-ketogenic sugar commonly present in the diet, so it makes sense that combining PUFA with fructose is a seriously bad idea, but ingesting any PUFA( without a lot of safe fats to negate them) is going to be bad.

Also, some liver fat,as long as it is saturated or monounsaturated, is safe and causes no oxidative stress to the liver. Since beef tallow is almost all sat. fat+ monouns. fat, then it's understandable that some( but not necessarily a lot of) safe fat in the liver is protective.

That's all academic and nice, but what about for the folk "In the trenches" so to speak (actually following this type of diet) and failing hardcore on it? Which, I'd dare to wager, is most of the forum members here? Would you say it's simply a lack of methionine and choline? Some people here are more liberal than others with PUFA's, but for the most part, most people here are pretty restrictive on PUFA, so I don't think that's the issue. PUFA from body fat stores, perhaps tho. It's true though that a lot of people (Myself included) have tended to avoid eggs due to PUFA and thus also miss out on choline. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm on the fence/open about choline (and just started supplementing/adding eggs back to my diet), but is choline truly THAT powerful of a substance that can literally make or break the health of the entire body?

 

[Mr. Sanders]

Ray himself who is significantly smaller than you talks about feeling best at 150g protein.
Most performance based guidelines are a minimum of 1g/lb of body weight.
I can confirm my n=1 sample does drastically better in every way including weight loss when my protein
consumption is 1.25-1.5g/lb

At 206 pounds you're in the 50% deficiency range for protein deficiency.
If I were 206 and say I had a goal weight of 180
I'd be hitting 150-200g protein daily no exceptions.

As you progress you'll find a number that works for you in that range
possibly even a little higher.

an addendum re: some of the responses you've gotten.

If you stopped eating you'd lose ALL the weight and ultimately starve to death.
The weight loss issue is related to calorie consumption, calorie usage, ample macros, ample micros.

Even someone who's overloaded with toxins, pufa, stress or whatever other boogeyman "cause" if they simply remove all caloric consumption
they will lose weight without exception... see: "concentration camp victims".

The issue is in all likelihood related to cals, cal usage, not enough protein.

 

[foodandtheworld]

@iPeat, returning to the original topic, I also have had a similar experience when I tried no-fat diets a few times. Recently I tried just potato, skim milk, and honey (those 3 foods only), but didn't lose significant weight with them. I think I tried it 1-2 times before, and lost a little bit, but found it too stressful to continue. This last time I didn't lose anything with it. The diet was nutrient dense (e.g., I wasn't eating only 2 potatoes and 2 cups of milk). I had the long weekend to experiment so it was basically 3 days of that. I made sure to eat every time I was hungry and respond adequately with food.

So I think your body's history may play a role and overall needs.

For example, I previously was quite malnourished, underweight, and was under a lot of stress physiologically (had many of the hypothyroid symptoms for most of my life).

So perhaps the no-fat diet was contradictory to my body's current needs. I never purged and I never intentionally followed restrictive diets, but I definitely had no idea about vitamins and minerals, the importance of protein, so all this coupled with over-exercising was probably chronically stressful. This article is about how eating disorders can affect the brain: How eating disorders affect the neurobiology of the brain - The Emily Program Demyelination is also a common thing among women with eating disorders and I read how fat can help repair the damage.

I read a post by natedawggh which got me thinking along those lines:

If you attempt a low-fat diet (and you have plenty of protein and carbs) but you don't feel good (achy, irritated, restless), then you need to keep saturated fat in your diet. If you do a low fat and you feel calm and pleasant, and experience an increase in libido then you can do low fat.
Fat And Libido
​

There may be room for individual variance and background, then. I'm going to experiment with some more saturated fats (butter) to see how my body responds. I tried it yesterday and seemed to lose weight but it's always hard to tell from just one day. Will let you know if I notice something.

​

 

[Cirion]

an addendum re: some of the responses you've gotten.

If you stopped eating you'd lose ALL the weight and ultimately starve to death.
The weight loss issue is related to calorie consumption, calorie usage, ample macros, ample micros.

Even someone who's overloaded with toxins, pufa, stress or whatever other boogeyman "cause" if they simply remove all caloric consumption
they will lose weight without exception... see: "concentration camp victims".

The issue is in all likelihood related to cals, cal usage, not enough protein.

Yes, but calorie restriction is proven time and time again to be damaging in its own right. The goal is to get your body in an energetic surplus, but without getting fat. How does one do this? This is the million dollar question. The goal should be to get your body in a state where all excess calories are burned in the form of heat, rather than stored. If you restrict calories yes you lose weight but you also lower the energetic rate/metabolism of the body, and ultimately haven't cured yourself of anything, least of all hypothyroid.

This is from Chris walker's e-book (he's basically a promoter of 95% of Peat's ideas)

The strength and ability of your mitochondria to produce energy via the oxidative metabolism determines your metabolic rate and overall health.

In the truly healthy state characterized by high metabolism, the mitochondria are running on full force, so that many molecules of glucose are getting combined with oxygen simultaneously, producing a very high output of energy that can easily meet the cell’s needs.

In fact, in the highest levels of health and stress resistance, this energy production exceeds the cell’s need for energy so that it begins “wasting” energy as heat through proteins called “uncoupling proteins” in the mitochondria.6,7,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40

These proteins essentially cause the final steps in the oxidative metabolism to get “skipped”, so that ATP isn’t created and only heat is liberated, but the glucose has still been burned and the CO2 has still been created.

List of references:
6. Yang, Xiaoyong, and Hai-Bin Ruan. "Neuronal control of adaptive thermogenesis." Frontiers in endocrinology 6 (2015).
7. Dulloo, Abdul G., Josiane Seydoux, and Jean Jacquet. "Adaptive thermogenesis and uncoupling proteins: a reappraisal of their roles in fat metabolism and energy balance." Physiology & behavior 83.4 (2004): 587-602.
33. Argyropoulos, George, and Mary-Ellen Harper. "Invited review: uncoupling proteins and thermoregulation." Journal of Applied Physiology 92.5 (2002): 2187-2198.
34. Rousset, Sophie, et al. "The biology of mitochondrial uncoupling proteins." Diabetes 53.suppl 1 (2004): S130-S135.
35. B Chan, Catherine, and Mary-Ellen Harper. "Uncoupling proteins: role in insulin resistance and insulin insufficiency." Current diabetes reviews 2.3 (2006): 271-283.
36. Erlanson‐Albertsson, Charlotte. "The role of uncoupling proteins in the regulation of metabolism." Acta physiologica scandinavica 178.4 (2003): 405-412.
37. Dulloo, Abdul G., and Sonia Samec. "Uncoupling proteins: their roles in adaptive thermogenesis and substrate metabolism reconsidered." British Journal of Nutrition 86.02 (2001): 123-139.
38. Busiello, Rosa A., Sabrina Savarese, and Assunta Lombardi. "Mitochondrial uncoupling proteins and energy metabolism." Frontiers in physiology 6 (2015): 36.
39. Palou, Andreu, et al. "The uncoupling protein, thermogenin." The international journal of biochemistry & cell biology 30.1 (1998): 7-11.
40. Kim-Han, Jeong Sook, and Laura L. Dugan. "Mitochondrial uncoupling proteins in the central nervous system." Antioxidants & redox signaling 7.9-10 (2005): 1173-1181.

 

[Mr. Sanders]

Yes, but calorie restriction is proven time and time again to be damaging in its own right. The goal is to get your body in an energetic surplus, but without getting fat. How does one do this? This is the million dollar question. The goal should be to get your body in a state where all excess calories are burned in the form of heat, rather than stored. If you restrict calories yes you lose weight but you also lower the energetic rate/metabolism of the body, and ultimately haven't cured yourself of anything, least of all hypothyroid.

This is from Chris walker's e-book (he's basically a promoter of 95% of Peat's ideas)

My point wasn't to advocate for caloric deficit.
My point was there are far more likely issues than some of the obscurity noted in the replies.
He's not getting enough protein which is a baseline problem that needs to be remedied before talking about obscure chemistry and whatever other outlier
possibilities it might be. Heck he might have lyme disease, agent orange poisoning, emf overload, etc, etc, etc, but regardless he's missing basic fundamentals.
Instead of running off into the weeds he's got basics to handle. If still no weight loss then he can run off into the weeds of obscurity.

 

[Cirion]

Ray himself who is significantly smaller than you talks about feeling best at 150g protein.
Most performance based guidelines are a minimum of 1g/lb of body weight.
I can confirm my n=1 sample does drastically better in every way including weight loss when my protein
consumption is 1.25-1.5g/lb

At 206 pounds you're in the 50% deficiency range for protein deficiency.
If I were 206 and say I had a goal weight of 180
I'd be hitting 150-200g protein daily no exceptions.

As you progress you'll find a number that works for you in that range
possibly even a little higher.

This seems like way too much, especially if you're severely overweight. Are you saying someone who weighs 300 lb should eat 450 gram protein? Have fun with all that ammonia, acidic by products etc...!!!. Even 300g seems like way too much. Research has clearly shown that the ideal Carb to protein ratio is roughly 4:1, and to do that with 300 gram protein you need 1,200 gram carb... (with 450g it'd be a mind numbing 1,800 carbs) and we've already established that this high of a carb intake is conducive to massive de novo lipogenesis plus the prompt storage of ANY dietary fat above zero grams straight into body fat stores... on the other hand, 150-200g seems a little more reasonable.

 

[iPeat]

A

If Peat diet made you fat, what makes you think it will make you lose fat. I don’t understand.

This may be blasphemous, but how about looking at the sugar part?

I can't speak for others but what I think is happening is that you start eating high sugar/fat/protein and eliminating PUFAs, and you feel great, see drastic health improvements and you just run with it, not thinking of weight gain. Before you know it, you feel better but you're in a big, fat pickle. The "Peat diet" didn't make me fat, I did. As far as I know, unless I missed something, Peat has mentioned Calcium and coconut oil as being important for weight loss, as well as mentioning the researcher/doctor who went zero fat and lost weight.

 

[Dino D]

@redsun i think people report more fat gain when eating starch... even on this forum som I''m not sure about that... many have gut problems and bloat and get heavy... i get insomnia from starch, very often... i bloat from it...
I think 150-200 gram of protein 1x a day rice or potato, 1x time pinaple juice, and i dont know what to do with fat... and there is the ,,discipline"

 

[redsun]

@redsun i think people report more fat gain when eating starch... even on this forum som I''m not sure about that... many have gut problems and bloat and get heavy... i get insomnia from starch, very often... i bloat from it...
I think 150-200 gram of protein 1x a day rice or potato, 1x time pinaple juice, and i dont know what to do with fat... and there is the ,,discipline"

High protein/Starch only or very low sugar/low fat diet leads to weight loss. This is common for bodybuilders. I have experience with these typr of diet awhile and can attest to the effectiveness. Provides the glucose and the protein, exactly what you need. Now if the gut is compromised starch can exacerbate that issue. Increasing starch will increase weight by the increase in bulk from the starch itself. Simple sugars and low fiber fruits do not contain so much unused fibers and therefore less weight. Fat gain is another thing. I highly doubt there would be so much reported "fat gain" from starch if the diet was solely starch for carbs.