RP Diet & Lifestyle For Young Men With A Lust For Life

Got the idea of starting this thread after a reply I received here: Not Doing Well On High Fruit | Juice Intake

I’m a total lurker, but I have been quietly following a lot of your posts and you’ve got me motivated enough to post.
Dude, ditch the Ray Peat effort. You’re only having problems. If your concern is anabolism, testosterone, etc, there are other resources to read on like anabolicmen.com and Christopher Walker. Both are very heavy supplement sales driven but the book Master Your T has enough good information on the subjects you’re looking for.
Trying to cobble together a Ray Peat diet has you going in circles of anxiety. Maybe read through @olive posts.
Even look at LeanGains.com and apply some principles to an alternative.
You’re too young to be fretting about on an old man diet like Peat’s. Read the alternatives and do some more vigorous stuff.
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So, I'm interested in some general guidelines for a young man to follow.
The 2 main motivations / pursuits that attracted me to RP are:

• hope for greater energy levels
• hope for high androgens & high Testosterone
• hope for better mental health / resillence, which would have a positive effect on my social life
• hope to stop thinning & receding hairline

I am lean and fit, have some muscle mass. Though I suffer from low T / libido and low energy levels (dedicated threads)
Any thoughts / guidelines?
I lift heavy weights 3 times / week for aesthetics & strength. I don't do cardio, except walking.

• should someone like me be taking stuff like Aspirin, if I'm not overweight or something?
• should I include more starch / glucose for greater strength in the gym?

 

It seems like that person is interested in selling various supplements from various sites. Ray's basic idea is that people should eat to increase their energy, and to let themselves be guided by instinct and hunger.

"Some people feel they have to eat for theoretical nutrition, rather than for hunger. And if you force yourself to eat when you're not hungry, that can lead to stress and sluggishness of your intestine." Ray Peat​

 

For testosterone problems, I would stop consuming dairy, coconut oil (because of the lauric acid), and added sugars. Eat beef fat (very anabolic) and MCT for your fats. Eggs are also very anabolic especially when eaten raw. For carbs, eat starches and fruits, not a bunch of soda and icecream. Coffee and cacao can be helpful for testosterone as well. If inflammation is an issue then cut out high VA foods, and make sure to not get more than about 5 g of PUFA per day so your mead acid production goes into high gear.

 

Why should he avoid lauric acid for testosterone problems?

 

5a-r inhibitor

 

Forget what you have learned here about fruit being the optimal source of energy and go by results only.

Try to run controlled tests changing one variable at a time and writing down your results.

Best would be to test food in isolation on an empty stomach.

- How do you feel after eating it?
- Do you feel warm or cold after eating it?
- Do you feel energized after eating it?

Keep the winners, ditch the losers.

I have problems with large parts of Ray's recommended way of eating...dairy, fruits, coconut oil....

Fruits do nothing for me in terms of energy. They seem very detrimental for my mental clarity and metabolism. I feel cold quickly after eating fruits.

I do very well on beef and starch (wheat, rice, potatoes....) in terms of energy and well-being. Starch gives me great energy and heats my body up nicely.

Meat and starch seems to work really well for plenty of people here on the forum.

 

I assume your statement is based on the one paper (Shimizu and Kondo) that is always used to say that coconut oil is somehow anti-androgenic. If that is correct, I don't understand how you can think that beef fat is particularly androgenic, as it is 40% oleic acid, which is an even stronger 5a-r inhibitor according to that study. It also contains a significant amount of palmitic acid, which they also found to be a strong inhibitor.

 

Of all the people on this forum how many are doing good on high fruit intake? Like super good? Very few. And how many can maintain a strict weight training program that is primarily focused on muscle growth and increasing strength on fruits and dairy? All the guys who are actually building muscle and maintaining large amounts and in general have an aesthetic male body type use starches.

There is a reason starches are the popular carbohydrate for bodybuilders and not oranges. I don't do well on mostly carbs from fruit and sugars like most here. Starch has to be in there for me, its pure glucose with nutrients, that's the purpose. How long will you play around with fruits/dairy/sugars until you realize its not working? That is the real question. Stop doing what so many here have done and still are doing by trying to make problem food groups likes mountains of fruit, dairy, and sugars work.

I think Christopher Walker is a decent source of info and useful. Protein and starch, with some sugars. Dairy can also be a problem case for so many people and you should consider reducing it or dropping it temporarily to see how you do. Potatoes which are very nutrient dense, filled with glucose and potassium will do great for energy levels because its providing glucose with everything else to use it properly.

For the short times I do zero starch I could not for the life of me have any muscle pump or glycogen and I lacked strength and lacked energy for life. Its like a switch, and the reason its a switch is because lack of glucose. It is what it is, anyone can just pull what Peat says is good, doesnt make it so. Especially when we are talking about being a male who wants to have true vitality. Drop the ball and start eating lots of meat and starch like others have already suggested.

 

Isn’t this study also in vitro? I’m skeptical that any of these fats actually have enough effect on the androgen receptor once digested and metabolized. Olive oil avacado oil and coconut oil.

 

The study also ignores the fact that dietary saturated fatty acids are rapidly esterified, and esterified lauric acid has no inhibitory effect whatsoever.

 

Yeah I also wonder Rays thoughts on fats and there direct impacts on 5ar. I’ve emailed him awhile ago on this an never heard back but the studies on them inhibiting androgens is flawed at best. Androgenic action of food is important in context of how one would feel after a meal. I for one find dairy very androgenic which is a debatable topic for some on the forum but that comes from how it feels after I drink quality dairy and get sugars from milk honey and oj maple syrup.

 

For me, high-quality dairy is also androgenic when I feel good overall and have no intestinal issues. I think it all depends on your intestinal health. When everything is running smoothly, dairy seems like a very complete food. Sucrose and honey make me feel very toasty and energized, and too much starch and fiber usually make mw feel cold and irritable. The worst time in my life was when I was eating only rice, potatoes, and meat (chicken&beef) for a few months because I thought that was good. So much for every male will do well on the standard bodybuilder diet.

 

I'm mainly speaking from my own experience. The lauric acid explanation was after the fact so it might have been because of a different reason. n=1, your milage may wary.

There are however a couple of more papers than the one you mentioned, suggesting that lauric acid is anti-androgenic. For what it's worth oleic acid seems to be more inhibitive on 5a-r1, and lauric acid seems to be more inhibitive on 5a-r2. Myristic acid is even more inhibitve on 5a-r2. Finasteride works mainly on r2 and r3.

 

Same for me, I play football and lift weights and using fruits as major carb source is not optimal for performance and energy levels, maybe for extreme obese sick people could work to avoid starch, not for young, active muscular mens.


Beef, fish, potatoes, rice with SOME fruits for fructose. Liver and gelatin as whole foods supplements.

Cheese or eggshells powder for calcium.

 

This one is a little harder to solve than the rest, because you can eat the best diet but if there is a fair amount of stress in your life, it affects everything negatively, sleep, digestion, etc, and then that will negatively effect your energy and androgens.

Diet (proper macros and tons of micros. I shoot for at least 2x the RDA on most), sleep, being active, sunlight and stressing less will most likely have the biggest effect.

This will be a result of better energy and androgens. Vit B1 has been doing absolutely wonders for me at staying calm and centered. It goes very nicely with extra magnesium.

Aspirin is anti-serotonin and pro-CO2 and androgens, so it could be great if you don't get a negative reaction to it. I take it and it's not hindering my muscle gains at all.

It would be a good experiment to do yes.

Sorry to ask this if you already addressed it:
1) what's your total calorie intake?
2) what's your macros like?
3) what's your micros like?
4) what does your training program look like?
5) what has worked for you in the past?

 

Which are those?

 

I think ,C.Walker, Tim Berzin and Stan Efferding are good sources or info for people looking for increase metabolism, build muscle and aiming for good energy levels, all of them are influenced by Peat ideas but translated for not obese sick people, but more for young/active/athletes/ people.

 

What do you think of well formulated multivitamins like Thorne Elite for Athletes? Sometimes I just get the 100% RDA with food and I think stress and endocrine disruptors could deplete vitamins and minerals faster.

 

What makes you think those guys are particularly healthy and energetic? In my experience, very hairy, muscular guys are neither. In my opinion, a high-protein, high-starch diet is the best way to dysbiosis and over activation of the adrenal glands.

 

I personally don't feel an energy boost from eating 1-2 pieces of fruit. However, fresh, raw juice makes my brain & body buzzing with higher energy for a while.