My Journey To Optimal Health

[Cirion]

I need to figure out some alternative sources of sugar as well to increase my carb intake but doesn't maple syrup have inadequate nutrients to be suitable use long-term? I think fructose without vitamin C is bad for you. I was considering buying some OJ concentrate but I'm worried about impurities.

All I know is that maple syrup is always a staple on days that I do well, and in large amounts too (1-2 cups). I get plenty of vitamin C. If you're really worried about it, can always stock up on ascorbic acid or something. I also like to put OJ in my home made jello. Also maple syrup, being mostly sucrose, means it is only 50% fructose content, and also 50% glucose.

I'm more interested in experimentation than theory at this point. My experiments show that maple syrup is awesome. It's interesting to theorize why and justify it - but at the end of the day... it makes me feel good, so I'm gonna eat it. Lol.

Of course, I wouldn't suggest you use maple syrup for your ONLY food, that should be clear without me having to say it, but I'll say it, just in case lol.

OJ is a LOT more hit or miss for me than maple syrup is in terms of mental states/energy/etc. I find I do have to limit this to no more than like 3 cups a day. You might try pressing your own OJ instead though. I haven't experimented with this much yet.

 

[Cirion]

Just had what I believe to be a major epiphany when I was thinking about how I wanted to have 250 gram of carb right at wakeup and why I thought it would help me. You know, those moments when you go to bed and your mind suddenly is firing at 100% and of course, stroke of creative thought hits you... just when you want to sleep.

I believe a lot of my problems are due to ramping up my calories as the day goes on. Not much at breakfast, a little more at lunch, and tons at dinner.

This probably explains many things such as:

No hunger at breakfast, so crappy energy, horrible moods etc for half the day, hunger usually not presenting itself until at least halfway through the day sometimes not even until dinner. A self-perpetuating cycle because with no hunger, I always end up delaying food for later, which means once again I won't be hungry earlier in the day, and so will have crappy energy... rinse repeat. In addition, with a ramp up style of eating rather ramp down style of eating, there's an excessive amount of digestion going on during the night which doesn't leave energy for cellular regeneration. The body spending energy for digestion as well as cellular regeneration, quickly is exhausted of energy, resulting in running out of glucose despite eating a big dinner.

Right at the beginning of the day you're essentially at a "Local" calorie deficit (even if you eat a lot of food every day) and its not until your body is in a "Local" surplus that you feel "normal", have energy, good mood etc. You must actually be in a surplus most/all the day, because when the nightly fast comes you better have a surplus of energy to deal with the fast. But, if you're like me and have a history of saving big meals for later in the day, your surplus doesn't come until mid to late afternoon or even evening -- which would explain my lethargic days and yet manic evenings energy and mood wise. Case in point - this manic post I am making now at midnight... LOL In other words, I'm not healing from hypothyroid because I only spend a small portion of my day truly in a "Fed" state despite eating lots of food: sometimes only 30-50% of the day in essence and for most of this year have effectively been practicing "Intermittent Fasting" unintentionally, and thus causing the damage that that entails.

So, for example, with me needing roughly 4,600 calories a day, I've often put off as much as 3,000 of the calories until mid afternoon and beyond. This is entirely the wrong thing to do. If anything I should be having 2-3000 calories before noon. Maybe something like 55% calories at breakfast, 30% at lunch, and 15% at dinner. Breakfast should be a feast to demolish the cortisol from the nightly fast and get energy for the day (instead of using caffeine as a crutch), lunch should provide a solid bit of energy to keep you going in the afternoon, with dinner being enough to top you off before the fast. So with a 4600 calorie budget that'd look something like:

2,530 calories for breakfast (lol wow!! that's definitely a change from how I've been doing it.)
1,380 calories for lunch
690 for dinner

Unfortunately, 90% of us live in Corporate America and always in a rush to get ready in the morning. I know I am guilty of this. This makes it hard to make a nutritious, calorie dense breakfast and also have time to eat it. This basically means one has to adopt an earlier morning schedule and earlier to go to bed schedule also, to make this work realistically.

I always complain about not being able to get to sleep early, well, I don't know why it took me so bloody long to realize what should have been glaringly obvious. Meal timing is huge! This is probably a big reason why most Corporate Americans are fat. Spend the whole day in a cortisol spike, and finally shut it off when you get home and can make a big meal. Only problem is, intermittent chronic cortisol spikes tells your body to store body fat like its going out of style... not to mention diabeeetus and all that fun-stuff...

I'm wondering if at least some of my perceived digestion problems are merely a relic of timing my food incorrectly??

I'll keep it simple for now and mostly have foods I'd normally already eat, just timed differently, and I can adjust from there... So something like this to start:

This follows pretty much the ratios I think makes sense -- alot at breakfast, a moderate amount at lunch, and minimal amounts at dinner. In addition, changing it up this way allows me to have gelatin with the beef which should alleviate some problems i've been having with beef, since historically I have beef alone and gelatin on its own as its own "meal" which I know I know, is stupid, but this is an attempt to rectify things. This plan also keeps me at the Sweet Spot (tm) of 0.5 gram tryptophan, even with meat in the diet. I have never attempted 0.5 gram or less tryptophan with animal products, I suspect it will do me good. If I still do poorly, I can always ditch the meat again if necessary.

Just some further random musings... This also probably suggests that the optimal time to do your workout is around the lunch time frame, as its gonna be your most well-fed state with this eating pattern. Again this is very unfortunately inconvenient for most people, although there actually is a gym at my workplace. If I start actually having energy again, I just might use this gym at lunch hr.

... aaand now its 1 am and I'm still not asleep. lol fml. But, I'm actually feeling happy and confident for a change. I really think this will work. I used to love having an early morning - early bedtime routine back when I was healthy. I think its one key to optimal health, as like I say, its kinda what I used to do back when I actually felt good. I'd go to bed as early as 7-8pm and be up sometimes even before the sun came up but certainly at least just before.

 

[Cirion]

Not surprisingly, I didn't feel well this morning. But I expected it, so that's OK. I had insomnia caused by, like I say, excess of calories too late in the night.

I found it really hard to get 50% of my calories this morning but I pretty much managed it. It took me nearly 2 hrs to do it! Lol. Longest breakfast ever. I barely rolled into work in time so I need to wake up earlier for sure, as I was super rushed and that's cortisol I don't need to be having.

Energy is average. Not amazing but not bad. I guess considering my lack of sleep (like 4-5 hrs total) it's pretty good? Another thing I noticed right away - massive increase in bowel movement frequency. My bowels moved like 4 times this morning lol.

My struggle lately has been figuring out protein intake. So I did a little bit more digging in my database. Remembered that Protein times Fernstrom ratio in the past led to interesting plots. But I have way more data, and the trend is even more interesting now...

This suggests that limiting protein is not necessarily required after all. All that is truly necessary is crush the fernstrom ratio. The lower F ratio is, the higher protein can be. This means eliminating any high P/F foods wherever possible. Potato is, unfortunately, a very high P/F food. Actually, most starches are. Probably one of the reasons starches aren't necessarily conducive to optimal health, but you can get away with them in a low protein diet because you have the "P" part of "P times F" low which makes P times F low even tho F is high.

I already removed rice from the diet, if I remove potatoes (or severely limit them) I might be able to increase animal products a bit more and stay within a low tryptophan, thus a low fernstrom, and thus a low P*F value. Which, interestingly enough -- will make me finally have a starch free diet, which is literally what Ray Peat says a person with bad digestion should be doing in the first place. Go figure.

Ray Peat:

“For people with really sensitive intestines or bad bacteria, starch should be zero.”

I always find this quote interesting, because Ray Peat rarely advises people so authoritatively. He doesn't say starch should be low, or minimal, he clearly says... ZERO.

Really, truthfully, the only reasons I have had starch in my diet is for satiety reasons. But if you add more meat, the necessity of starch starts to go away. Meat/animal products can replace your satiety needs.

Doesn't food combining principles say you should not mix meat and starch? I think I finally understand why now. That's a great way to FUBAR your amino acid balance in the body.

This all shows btw also that a pure potato diet is a bad, bad bad idea. I see now why people here who have tried it have suffered horrible mental states. Enjoy all that tryptophan...

Sugar is just so much more pleasant in the context of animal products than starch is, I know this even subjectively. A Mexican cola and/or juice is always way more refreshing to me with some meat than a plate of potatoes.

 

[lampofred]

I looked into the nutrients of maple syrup and apparently it's pretty high in B2. Peat says B2 is very important for respiration to occur properly and for serotonin reduction, and that it's destroyed easily by blue light. Nathan Hatch says that low B2 is often the cause of low B3 and low B6, both of which are involved in regulating serotonin, and B3 is sort of the energy currency of the body. So maybe that's why it works so well for you.

But then again, you mentioned that you're not really feeling any noticeable effect from energin, so that kind of discounts the B2 theory...

 

[Cirion]

I looked into the nutrients of maple syrup and apparently it's pretty high in B2. Peat says B2 is very important for respiration to occur properly and for serotonin reduction, and that it's destroyed easily by blue light. Nathan Hatch says that low B2 is often the cause of low B3 and low B6, both of which are involved in regulating serotonin, and B3 is sort of the energy currency of the body. So maybe that's why it works so well for you.

But then again, you mentioned that you're not really feeling any noticeable effect from energin, so that kind of discounts the B2 theory...

Well I always think food trumps supplementation for the same nutrient (in this case B2). Supposedly Energin has 90% absorption rate though.

But yea B2 is important, probably doubly so, for people who sit under blue light all day long.

There's also the fact that maple syrup is one of the richest caloric/sugar sources you can possibly have. It's one of the only ways you can pound over 1000 calories in just a few seconds and I am pretty sure there exists no other way to restore blood sugar any quicker way.

 

[Cirion]

So my energy is not bad today. In the corner of my mind I can definitely "Feel" the fatigue from insufficient sleep (4-5 hr) and know I should have little trouble sleeping tonight as such, but my focus and energy is not horrible all things considered, which I think I can owe the large intake of calories earlier in the day for. I don't really have brain fog, but instead brain fatigue instead (sounds the same but its not, and its from the lack of sleep) but to a degree I can push through it unlike brain fog. I checked my heart rate, and its through the roof. I think I am experiencing what Ray said can happen during hypothyroid recovery that the HR could temporarily go really high / hyperthyroid. It was like 100--110 bpm (resting pulse) and normally I'm at most 90. It's been tough forcing down the calories to "reset" my eating schedule, I find I am not at all hungry for lunch, but like breakfast, will power through it as its the only way to reset myself. I am feeling really hot too which I am hoping is the uncoupling effect in action.

 

[somuch4food]

I think that's a good move you've made with a big breakfast.

I do eat most of my calories before 2pm and I find having an adequate breakfast helps start the day on the right foot.

 

[Cirion]

I think that's a good move you've made with a big breakfast.

I do eat most of my calories before 2pm and I find having an adequate breakfast helps start the day on the right foot.

I've thought about doing this before but never pulled the trigger because I always feared I would be hungry at dinner and run out of glucose during the night without a big dinner. Well, let's face the facts, I'm having trouble running out of glucose despite having a big dinner. So then that just made me even more scared to try it. I still am a little, so we'll see how it goes. But I have a feeling its total caloric intake that ultimately matters for being able to last the night and that maybe, just maybe, it might actually improve doing it this way due to less digestion going on at night. Plus I'm sick of staying up late and having a hard time waking up at a reasonable hr, so my other motivation was to reset my circadian rhythm. I miss the days of going to bed at 8 and waking up at 4 or 5. I just feel so much more accomplished when I can get in to work at 7 and leave at 3. Plus you dodge a lot of the rush hour traffic that way which is always great.

 

[Cirion]

I know its already early, and I've put my foot in my mouth calling things too early in the past, but I really think I've struck gold with this.

-- Bowel movements are crazy!!! I am already on #6 BM for the day. I am hoping this means I am purging a lot of gunk from my body. I think this is a record for me LOL
-- Mental state is the best its been in a while at this time of the day, and even with sleep deprivation. I can tell when my mental state is firing on almost all cylinders when I start having random soundtracks/music playing in my head... which is now happening. This never happens normally on a work day.

 

[milk_lover]

@Cirion If I am going to eat any starch, it would be only white bread. I am not sure how much tryptophan is in white bread though. Drinking coke, juices, Red Bull, purified honey and eating meat are for me very gut friendly. Milk is a hit and miss. Only certain brands make me feel ok. I'll try to experiment with maple syrup.

 

[Cirion]

@Cirion If I am going to eat any starch, it would be only white bread. I am not sure how much tryptophan is in white bread though. Drinking coke, juices, Red Bull, purified honey and eating meat are for me very gut friendly. Milk is a hit and miss. Only certain brands make me feel ok. I'll try to experiment with maple syrup.

Doesn't most white bread have a litany of processed additives like iron in particular? I also don't trust the vitamins and other stuff that usually is added to bread. Bleached flour is no bueno.

Interesting that in the past meat and me have had an unfriendly relationship. I wonder how much of it has simply been A.) poor food timing (too much food/meat at night) and B.) too much bad aminos (in the past I'd rarely eaten gelatin with meat, even though ray explicitly says to do it, I just got lazy). But today seems to be a different story. I am floored at how many BM's I had today lol. I feel convinced now that digestion is strongest in the morning and very early afternoon soon after waking up and slowly degrade as the day goes on. But let's see how things proceed this week, I suppose.

I always wish I could make milk work for me, but every thing I have tried has failed, and I really think it's the tryptophan. It's the one thing I'm not sure I'll ever see eye to eye on Ray with. Maybe one day when my health improves tryptophan won't hit me like a 100,000 ton truck anymore. And here I am saying this with a username of "milk_lover" LOL. This feels like going up to a fan of a certain sports team and telling them their team sucks.

As I close this evening I am getting a bunch of hunger at night like I feared, and I'm having to slightly blow my tryptophan budget with some potatoes (chose potatoes instead of meat since I'm still lower in carbs for the day than I'd like), but less than usual, just 1 lb instead of 2 lb, if I'm still hungry I'll just fast the rest of the night, I've gotten an ok amount of calories. if the hunger keeps up this time of day I think i will shift from 93% lean beef to 90% lean beef for a few more fat calories (to avoid having to eat more beef and thus bring in more tryptophan) plus my database suggests that at least for weight loss, 50 gram of fat is actually optimal and not zero or close to it. 50 gram of fat hasn't given me the best waking temps though, but weight loss is something I'm not gonna complain about at this point given how overweight I am.

 

[Vinny]

-- Bowel movements are crazy!!! I am already on #6 BM for the day. I am hoping this means I am purging a lot of gunk from my body. I think this is a record for me LOL

Man!
You can build Manhattan again!

 

[milk_lover]

Doesn't most white bread have a litany of processed additives like iron in particular? I also don't trust the vitamins and other stuff that usually is added to bread. Bleached flour is no bueno.

Interesting that in the past meat and me have had an unfriendly relationship. I wonder how much of it has simply been A.) poor food timing (too much food/meat at night) and B.) too much bad aminos (in the past I'd rarely eaten gelatin with meat, even though ray explicitly says to do it, I just got lazy). But today seems to be a different story. I am floored at how many BM's I had today lol. I feel convinced now that digestion is strongest in the morning and very early afternoon soon after waking up and slowly degrade as the day goes on. But let's see how things proceed this week, I suppose.

I always wish I could make milk work for me, but every thing I have tried has failed, and I really think it's the tryptophan. It's the one thing I'm not sure I'll ever see eye to eye on Ray with. Maybe one day when my health improves tryptophan won't hit me like a 100,000 ton truck anymore. And here I am saying this with a username of "milk_lover" LOL. This feels like going up to a fan of a certain sports team and telling them their team sucks.

HAHAH have at it. I am not the defender of all milk. Sometimes a week goes by without milk and sometimes I finish a gallon a day. I am NOT a son a of MILK. Insult it throw it outside the window, I really really don't care hahaha. But if you insult my football team, Real Madrid, here we have a problem.

I eat white bread because sometimes I like to join social dining where I can eat whatever like everybody at the table. Also I don't want to feel "restricted".

 

[Cirion]

Man!
You can build Manhattan again!

lol

 

[charlie]

Well I mean I believe whoever made the product that it works. But maybe since you are doing topically that oral B complex might be worth a shot. I always feel it when I take Bs, it can easily lower blood sugar if not taken with enough food but it helps my energy.

Which B complex do you take?

Maybe I need to just pound a ****ing full cup of maple syrup first thing in the morning, now that I know how it improves my energy/mental state...

Hey brother I been doing shots of syrup thanks to you! Cheers!

 

[Cirion]

Hey brother I been doing shots of syrup thanks to you! Cheers!

Haha nice. Now I know what to bring to parties to get a much healthier "High" lol!!.... I do creative things when I go to parties. I remember the last time I was healthy I would bring whey + maltodextrin shakes and sip on that in the evening instead of alcohol... This would give me a much cleaner "High" than any alcohol ever could... I always feel weird not drinking anything at all at a party so that was my solution..

Now I would probably do something like Bone broth protein + some sugar concoction (as I'm not a fan of the tryptophan in Whey). Bone broth protein powder is soo expensive though!! Argh! I haven't actually tried it yet for that reason. But I bet it's really good for you. How about bone broth protein powder and maple syrup?

 

[redsun]

Which B complex do you take?

Hey brother I been doing shots of syrup thanks to you! Cheers!

It's some cheap B complex I bought at a store sometime ago. I wanted a b complex from vitamin shoppe which likely would be better quality but all they have is that B 100 and B 50 crap which has equal B quantities which is terrible.

7.5 mg thiamine
8.5 mg riboflavin
100mg niacinamide
10mg pyridoxine
200mcg folic acid
30mcg cobalamin
50mg pantothenic acid

This is one pill, the serving is two so you would just double all that. Not the best ratios probably, but there is quite a bit of B3 in it which I like. I don't get low blood sugar feeling anymore though. I did initially while first taking it.

Also when I say "I feel it" I mean that in a good way. Much more stable energy and stamina for daily life.

 

[Cirion]

No dice. This morning was really bad. In fact the worst this entire year. Super hypothyroid 97.3F waking temp (it did go up a bit to 97.7 before I ate something but still). I was afraid this would happen by NOT saving my calories primarily until dinner =/

Dunno what to do guys... eating a lot of food at breakfast feels like the right move, but now I'm hosed at the nightly fast in terms of surviving it if I don't top it off with a lot of calories. And I simply can't lose weight. That's the other problem. This is so frustrating. The nightly fast is literally like trying to defeat Hitler's whole army with a single firearm. If it wasn't for the nightly fast I could actually start to increase my altitude, as it stands, I crash into the mountain every morning.

Maybe I just didn't eat enough still. I have noticed when I don't eat enough it makes me gain weight, counter-intuitively enough. I wonder if eating more calories at breakfast increases the overall metabolic rate and my glucose just crashed hard last night.

This might also be implicating animal products despite keeping a low tryptophan budget tho... I did have a pound of beef yesterday after all. Animal products do usually jack up my temps like this.

I think this time I will just fast after dinner and ignore hunger. I simply can't afford to blow my tryptophan budget. That's literally what killed me I think. If that doesn't work either, I may try to increase calories again, and if that doesn't work, then animal products are going to get the ax again.

 

[somuch4food]

No dice. This morning was really bad. In fact the worst this entire year. Super hypothyroid 97.3F waking temp (it did go up a bit to 97.7 before I ate something but still). I was afraid this would happen by NOT saving my calories primarily until dinner =/

Dunno what to do guys... eating a lot of food at breakfast feels like the right move, but now I'm hosed at the nightly fast in terms of surviving it if I don't top it off with a lot of calories. And I simply can't lose weight. That's the other problem. This is so frustrating. The nightly fast is literally like trying to defeat Hitler's whole army with a single firearm. If it wasn't for the nightly fast I could actually start to increase my altitude, as it stands, I crash into the mountain every morning.

Maybe I just didn't eat enough still. I have noticed when I don't eat enough it makes me gain weight, counter-intuitively enough. I wonder if eating more calories at breakfast increases the overall metabolic rate and my glucose just crashed hard last night.

This might also be implicating animal products despite keeping a low tryptophan budget tho... I did have a pound of beef yesterday after all. Animal products do usually jack up my temps like this.

Relax, give this a week at least. You won't be resetting your circadian rhythm over one day. I think it might be necessary to suffer a few days while on the path of recovery. I don't think you should aim to have perfect days. You should be looking at improvements over weeks and months. I find day to day is really variable even if I eat the same thing and do the same things. Breakfast is most important to me since it sets the mood for the entire day most of the time. I find a lot of calories early can somewhat make up for a bad night.

I'm having a rough time too and am upping my meat protein intake since when I was sleeping better that was one of the thing that was different. I'm also having a lot of body aches and I remember you mentioned having this problem when protein intake was too low.

 

[Cirion]

I appreciate the words, but I'm not yet convinced. True days should fluctuate a lot, but when things are this bad, I clearly erred horrendously somehow. A "fluctuation" should be a 98.3F temp instead of 98.6F. not 97.3F. When I did my full week vegan experiment a couple of weeks back, I was consistently 98.6F each and every day and the one fluctuation I had was 98.4 or 98.5 instead of 98.6F. I actually wasn't getting body aches anymore on veganism once I got enough protein from enough potatoes. I can't afford to do this for weeks and months if it's making me retain body weight and also feel like a train wreck.

I'm just truthfully rather bitter and fed up of being bipolar. I feel good, great, even euphoric before bed and then like I want to slit my wrists in the morning. Seriously, how does one survive the nightly fast? It seems like an insurmountable task!