Paleo & I.F. To Peating - Immediate Results

[j_corvin]

Hi, everyone.

Just wanted to say hello and participate in the forum after lurking for a while.

I'm an ex-paleo-style-of-eating guy, and over the last week, transitioned to the beginnings of a peat style diet. The difference (without any hyperbole) has been incredible:

I've always been thin, and free of symptoms related to food and diet changes. Reading this forum and Peat's articles has made me re-evaluate my diet, and I've since (retrospectively) noticed many subtle cues about the various damaging foods I've been eating, but by far the biggest change has been the swap from intermittent fasting to "proper" meal/nutrient timing:

I've been daily intermittent fasting for somewhere around 5 years (Ouch! I had no idea it was that long). I'd stop eating after my main evening meal, (large, calorific, protein, carb and fat heavy) and not eating again until lunch the next day (light calories, low carb, high protein). All in, around 18 hours per day.

Over the last week, I've changed from 18 hours of zero food, to the following:

------- Morning Modifications

Wake up, drink glass of orange juice

Slowly drink a shake: (about 600 calories of: strained organic yoghurt, organic coconut cream, dates, honey, blueberries)

Mid-morning: Gouda cheese slice and some grapes, perhaps a sweet tasting apple.

----- Evening Modifications

Instead of fasting after my main meal, I've dialled back the size slightly, and then before bed I'll eat another slice of gouda, and a spoon of honey.

----- Other Stuff

I'm taking small amounts of glycine / broth, and upping intake of skimmed organic milk. It's not fully Peat yet, but it's a start. I've thrown out all whey protein, cod liver oil and other dubious supplemts.


Observed Changes:

I've been fasting so long that I can't remember how I was before. Fasting seems to have made me slightly pessimistic, and although I wouldn't say depressed, kind of listless and melancholy. I always felt fine on zero food, but the fact I was so "jumpy" and nervous, makes me think I was running on stress for 5 solid years.

1 week of semi-peating has been profound: I jump out of bed each morning, I smile more, I get more done. I feel so content and optimistic. I just have an immense feeling of satisfaction. I had no idea simple sugars could do that much!!!

In addition, I actually feel WARM...Who'd have thought it wasn't normal to have hands and feet like ice!?

My digestion has been fine, and I've had zero negative effects from the change. There are dozens of subtle cues I've started to notice, which I'll note elsewhere, but for now, thanks for everything I've read so far!

 

[Lilac]

Interesting write-up. Thanks for posting it. I, too, finally got warm after switching to a Peat diet. I have lots of robes hanging in the closet that I haven't worn for years now.

 

[Tarmander]

Welcome and thanks for posting. I too noticed when I started eating more Peat an immediate boost in mood. It is amazing how much low level anxiety and depression can invade and mess up your life in subtle ways...that is until you finally feel good and realize what you were like.

 

[j_corvin]

Thanks, and yes, it is very subtle. I'd almost "forgotten" I was doing I.F on a daily basis. Slowly the little things start adding up: I'd say that looking back, the first sign that I was deteriating was the fact that during the summer, whilst wearing a t-shirt, I'd constantly be putting on, and then taking off a jacket or shirt whenever the wind picked up. I'd always been the sort of person that's rarely cold, even in winter. Laterly, I'd complain that winter coats that were a couple of years old were losing their warmth. Of course, it turns out it was me getting colder.

This winter, I'd even resorted to a small fan heater beside my desk (I work from home), and even when I was warm, my hands and feet would be like ice.

It's mad really. You just can't see it when you're on the inside. It's also nice to be able to eat simple sugars without hating myself!

My next project is to log body temps and get some blood work done.

 

[ReSTART]

I'd stop eating after my main evening meal

This is strange from any perspective. How could you possibly absorb all the nutrients you need in such a short period of time?
Where do you live?

 

[j_corvin]

This is strange from any perspective. How could you possibly absorb all the nutrients you need in such a short period of time?
Where do you live?

I'm from the UK. I fell into the paleo thing, then began reading sites like LeanGains (Martin Berkhan) and things like "Eat Stop Eat". There's also a guy called Ron Mignery who a few bloggers linked to, who wrote a book called "The Protein Cycling Diet". These days I.F seems to be huge, as the online cult grew, it just became habit.

Anyhow, too much fad diet reading and not enough paying attention to how I felt got me in the following pattern:

Morning: No food, just coffee and water
Lunch @1pm: Salad with protein (usually eggs, beef, chicken etc.) sometimes some potato, but more usually just fats
Afternoon: Snacks as required, but not very much really...
Dinner finished by around 7pm: Large meal of protein, carbs, fats

So yeah, generally an 8 hour feeding window....The thing is, when you eat like this, I'm pretty sure you're under-eating for a good portion of the week. (I'm 6" and pretty lean at 170lbs) This leads to frequent huge binges of crappy food and then guilt. It's madness really...

 

[WestCoaster]

Glad things are working better for you! Fasting often doesn't work because people fail to listen to their hunger signals. One should never fast if they are actually hungry, just as one should not be eating if they aren't hungry. Our hunger signals are in place for a reason. Our body is very efficient at notifying us when we should and shouldn't be eating.

The easiest way for me to describe this is through a flu with a high fever. As everyone knows, when you have a high fever, your body temperature is way up and the body essentially cuts the appetite completely. Anything people try to eat or even put in their mouth they puke it up. Eating raises the body temperature, and the last thing your body want's is to increase the body temperature more than it already is, it's trying to reduce it. So to alleviate this, the body simply kills the appetite so it can cool off. Any attempts to eat during this time will simply puke it up faster than you can put it in your mouth. The higher your fever is, the more the body will try to purge itself of anything that will increase it's temperature. I mean anyone can conduct this test themselves (though I don't advise it lol). Next time someone is running a high fever, try and eat something, see what happens.. lol. If your body temp is high enough, there is no way in hell you'll be able to keep any food down.

So think of it from a practical perspective, you're normal, healthy, and your body is telling you to eat (probably because it needs nutrients and you're starting to cool off), so why ignore it and continue fasting? Then again, if you feel good and simply aren't hungry till dinner time, why bother eating? So many people screw this up with paleo/primal by simply eating too much protein. Protein is extremely satiating, your body wants "x" amount of nutrients and energy, you eat too much protein filling yourself up, and inevitably end up in severe caloric restriction far beyond what your body wants. End result, the metabolism tanks, body temperature drops, thyroid slows, lethargy sets in and the person feels like crap. I even see in your post about being cold in the summer, this is a tell-tale sign at failure to listen to how you felt as you put it. Then people they blame paleo/primal and IF, when in actuality, they should have listened to their body and not fasted if they were hungry, and not eaten so much protein filling up and causing too large of a caloric deficit.

I'm not saying you did this, but it is extremely common with the paleo/primal crowd, especially if they start intermittent fasting. The absolute biggest problem I've seen with people who follow paleo/primal, and keto should be mentioned here, is they think they are following a higher fat diet when in actuality they are not. Eating steak and vegetable style meal isn't high fat. Eating salad with beef, chicken, eggs isn't high fat. A large meal of protein, carbs, and fats, is more than likely not high fat.

High fat would be eating the fattiest marbled steak you can find cooked in butter, and then more butter placed on top of it before eating. Vegetables cooked in bacon fat or butter. Skipping the salad, and mixing in your beef or eggs into guacomole made from a couple avocados. Skip the chicken because it's too lean. Chicken thighs with the skin on is more appropriate. A large dinner of protein, carbs, and fats would look like a healthy portion of ground beef cooked in butter or bacon fat. Carbs would be a decent helping of spinach or a cup of broccoli, and the fats would again be those items covered in butter, bacon fat, guacamole, olive oil etc..

I don't want to make assumptions but my best guess is, that is not what your paleo meals were looking like, which is probably why you (and many others including me at one time) failed at paleo suffering the exact same symptoms.

 

[Ukall]

@WestCoaster I think you explain it very well why most of people fail when changing their diets...
Regarding IF, I can say you pretty much describe what I was doing back then. I was hungry, but since I wanted to fast, I would ignore my hunger signals. I started to eat an apple initially, but I bet my body wanted more than an apple, of course. Then I went full IF and start to complete ignore my hunger till night.

But, let me ask you something: the way you talk, can you say that IF/Paleo/Primal/Keto can actually work if a person does it right or they are all going to fail later on (in comparison to Peat's ideas)?

 

[j_corvin]

@WestCoaster I really liked this post thanks... This should have been drilled into me years ago. And yes, you're absolutely right about the fat intake. It simply wasn't anywhere near what would be called high fat to a "proper" low carber or keto person.

When I listen to my body I naturally (remember, I don't have weight to lose at all) gravitate towards around 100g protein and about 70g fat a day at most. Trying to force down fats and proteins to make up the calories simply wasn't working for me, as I just found it disgusting. At best I'd get to 150g protein and about 100g fat, but feel really gross after a few days. Invariably this means that if you aren't eating enough carbs to plug the gap, you slowly sink into a rut of simply never eating enough calories, as like you say, the protein is so satiating. In addition, I'd use coffee as crutch, so even on two morning cups of strong black coffee, I simply didn't want to eat at all...Very much a combination of false and ignored signals.

The last year things got worse, and I'd begin to get repulsed by higher fat meals, especially if they contained lots of fried PUFA from restaurants...I ended up on on some massive sugar / carb binges too, which then set off a strange guilt complex that I've fallen off the wagon. All because I read too much "high carb = ill health" dogma. I've been lucky really, because what has ended in mild OCD could have turned into a serious eating disorder in some people...

Still, lesson learned, and I'm addressing the issues slowly.

 

[RatRancher]

I too did low carb hi protein off and on for 8 years.... the pounds came off both times I got hard core into it.
When I hit my upper 40s I developed GERD but did not know it. I thought my pain was cardiac related.Went to the ER,had cat scans stress EKG due to chest pain and tachycardia. But Dr said my heart was fine. But the only advice he gave was to cut back on coffee.

I started searching for answers.
A few years went by and I had tried everything without a prescription to help lower my high heart rate.
3 months ago I read that IF lowers resting heart rate....so I tried it...
Lost 30 pounds,and during periods of the fast my HR went down to the 70s. Until I ate something....I got to the point where I did not want to eat because of the HR ......since I was IFing 16-18 hours a day when I first did eat it was steak etc. But HR went up,hands and feet got cold,sometimes felt dizzy.

So looking online again I stumbled upon this place from a simple statement by RP regarding sugar and adrenaline. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I believe I was suffering from adrenaline trying to get sugar to power my systems ,especially after a high protein meal.
Two weeks into it,and I have not eaten this much since I was a teenager. Last night I woke up to get a snack at 3 am.
I have had more sugar this last week than probably the last 4 years combined.
My foundations of knowledge of nutrition, health etc have been shaken to the core. And the info here is almost too much to absorb.
I am sure I am making mistakes .
That's why I signed up, to be able to ask questions.
So this is my first post here, 8 years low/zero carb,3 months IF.
Glad I found this place. I apologize in advance for any stupid questions.

R2