Saturated Fats (SFA) Increase Glucose Oxidation While PUFA Decrease It

[TeaRex14]

I personally drink 1% milk. 1 quart of 1% milk is around 10 grams of fat, only 0.4 from PUFA. I usually eat a quart of 1% milk and a cup of lowfat cottage cheese everyday. Only around 15 grams of total fat (1 gram of PUFA) and you get about 52 grams of protein.

 

[Cirion]

This probably also helps to explain why one should probably increase dietary fat after one becomes lean. There's definitely a thing as losing too much body fat.

 

[cyclops]

There's definitely a thing as losing too much body fat.

Challenge Accepted!

 

[Waremu]

This thread has inspired me to stop drinking even 1% milk. I think milk without fat is not great though, so now I put MCT oil in my skim milk :P

On the road to <1 g a day PUFA... or at least <2g

Thats what I did 3 + years into Peating, where I ate less than 2-4g of PUFA per day for those 3 years before doing a more strict PUFA 'depletion' diet. I did a very low PUFA 'depletion' diet, but in two stages. Both stages were very low PUFA. Less than 1 gram per day. First stage it was very low PUFA but low-moderate fat from hydrogenated coconut oil. Reason being, hydrogenated coconut oil may possibly influence PUFA depletion at a higher rate. One or two studies on that were posted to this forum in the past. After 6 months of that, I cut the hydrogenated oil out and did a very very low fat, low PUFA diet, where I ate less than 1 gram of PUFA per day, and total fat intake was as low as possible (well blow 8% of total calories). Total fat averaged like 4-5 grams I think. Used skim milk, small cuts of liver so I still got folate and zinc, and b vitamins. A little fresh OJ for vitamin C and folate and some b vitamins. Plenty of coffee for b vitamins and magnesium. I then finished the 1 year with 0.5 PUFA max diet for one month.

I am not recommending this to anyone, but that is what I did. Skin was amazing and I was very cut. That is the only way I was able to lose the weight I gained Peating after 3-4 years. Now I wasn't obese or anything, but had about 30 pounds to lose. After my strict PUFA depletion diet, I kept lifting weights and adding some muscle, but I notice the increased metabolism after getting my fat stores down. I am sure putting on muscle helped increase metabolism, but not entirely to make up for how much I can eat now compared to years ago. I can average double the calories without putting on much weight as long as I don't go way to high on the fat intake, which is like 30-40% of total calories. But one other thing I notice is that it seems the fat I do gain is much easier to lose than when I was more saturated with PUFA.

I think the mistake many people make when they are new to Peating is eating too much total fat because if someone already has a lot of PUFA in their tissues, then I think even a high saturated fat diet will have enough PUFA to possibly make their PUFA 'depletion' progress much slower and in the meanwhile of it being slower, metabolism is already slow and they gain more fat weight from the extra calories (fat has more calories over carbs) and possibly burden the liver even further due to that, further slowing down healing. Light weight training along with the PUFA 'depletion' diet really turned things around for me. My liver health improved too. I couldn't handle much caffeine but now can easily consume large amounts with no issues (a possible sign of good liver health). Inflammation markers on tests are low too, as well as prolactin and TSH, etc. RT3 came down. That was very high for some time.

 

[Cirion]

I think the mistake many people make when they are new to Peating is eating too much total fat because if someone already has a lot of PUFA in their tissues, then I think even a high saturated fat diet will have enough PUFA to possibly make their PUFA 'depletion' progress much slower and in the meanwhile of it being slower, metabolism is already slow and they gain more fat weight from the extra calories (fat has more calories over carbs) and possibly burden the liver even further due to that, further slowing down healing.

I would agree. I think also most people don't appreciate just how much of a problem PUFA's are.

Many posters here (Myself included) justify or justified for a long time some "natural" PUFA foods like eggs, almonds, a few others, even fatty fish. Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I haven't gotten well yet. So now I'm getting more serious.

I do think someone who is healthy can probably handle some of the natural PUFA foods to an extent, but it's not helpful to someone trying to deplete PUFA stores as fast as possible.

 

[Waremu]

I personally drink 1% milk. 1 quart of 1% milk is around 10 grams of fat, only 0.4 from PUFA. I usually eat a quart of 1% milk and a cup of lowfat cottage cheese everyday. Only around 15 grams of total fat (1 gram of PUFA) and you get about 52 grams of protein.

I drink raw skimmed milk, which is around 1% equivalent. It is fine for me for maintenance since losing weight. I keep PUFA below 2 grams as a max. Try to shoot for 1-1.5 grams as a sweet spot. Easy to achieve as long as low PUFA nutrient dense foods like liver and oyster are used in small amounts. In fact, liver is so nutritionally dense that with it you can even reach most of your nutritional requirements on a very strict PUFA 'depletion' diet of about 0.5 grams of PUFA per day. I don't eat cheese though, because, for me, it's too empty in nutrition compared to milk for the PUFA content they have, and when I am keeping PUFA low I need to maximize vitamins and minerals per PUFA gram or calorie to avoid mineral or vitamin deficiencies or low intakes.

 

[Waremu]

I would agree. I think also most people don't appreciate just how much of a problem PUFA's are.

Many posters here (Myself included) justify or justified for a long time some "natural" PUFA foods like eggs, almonds, a few others, even fatty fish. Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I haven't gotten well yet. So now I'm getting more serious.

I do think someone who is healthy can probably handle some of the natural PUFA foods to an extent, but it's not helpful to someone trying to deplete PUFA stores as fast as possible.

I agree. I wouldn't eat eggs unless I knew what farmer they came from and it was from a truly cage free organic farm that doesn't feed soy, etc. I actually do get lower PUFA eggs from such a farmer, and will sometimes have one egg yolk here or there, but if ones goal is to limit PUFA as much as possible, I don't see how eggs are essential compared to liver. Liver offers what eggs have and more per PUFA calorie. Thats why I focus on grass fed liver. 1-2 ounces per day is still low enough in iron and offers so little PUFA and so much nutrition. That and my raw milk/oyster is all I really need, and some OJ and coffee, to fulfill most if not all of my nutrition needs.

 

[cyclops]

Many posters here (Myself included) justify or justified for a long time some "natural" PUFA foods like eggs, almonds, a few others, even fatty fish. Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I haven't gotten well yet. So now I'm getting more serious.

I agree. I wouldn't eat eggs unless I knew what farmer they came from and it was from a truly cage free organic farm that doesn't feed soy, etc. I actually do get lower PUFA eggs from such a farmer, and will sometimes have one egg yolk here or there, but if ones goal is to limit PUFA as much as possible, I don't see how eggs are essential compared to liver. Liver offers what eggs have and more per PUFA calorie. Thats why I focus on grass fed liver. 1-2 ounces per day is still low enough in iron and offers so little PUFA and so much nutrition. That and my raw milk/oyster is all I really need, and some OJ and coffee, to fulfill most if not all of my nutrition needs.

Yeah I wonder why Ray recommends eggs when he is so much against PUFA. I'm sure they are nutritionally dense and don't have insane amounts of PUFA, but they still have enough to be annoying so why bother? I don't think they have anything you can't get from liver and shellfish at less PUFA per calorie as you said. I think I'm done with eggs, at least for now.

 

[Cirion]

While ray does eat eggs on occasion, I am pretty sure that

- He doesn't eat many. No more than 1 or 2 in a given day. And he has said that it takes quite a lot of OJ for him to balance out the effects of even just one egg.
- He only eats eggs where he knows where they are coming from (aka, straight from the farm)

 

[cyclops]

While ray does eat eggs on occasion, I am pretty sure that

- He doesn't eat many. No more than 1 or 2 in a given day. And he has said that it takes quite a lot of OJ for him to balance out the effects of even just one egg.
- He only eats eggs where he knows where they are coming from (aka, straight from the farm)

What I gather is that he eats 1-2 eggs every day when in the US. These may not be the greatest eggs and at times he may not be exactly sure what they're diet is.

When he is in Mexico and he know what the chickens eat (the correct stuff) he eats more then 1-2 eggs per day. But I'm not sure exactly how many.

This is what I have gathered from his interviews.

 

[Cirion]

Ah yes that's how the quote goes, I remember now.

In any case I think *natural* food sources of PUFA are probably Ok to an extent once one is in good health, but would recommend against it for someone who needs to get PUFA depleted. That's like trying to drain the bath tub while keeping the water running.

 

[Waremu]

Yeah I wonder why Ray recommends eggs when he is so much against PUFA. I'm sure they are nutritionally dense and don't have insane amounts of PUFA, but they still have enough to be annoying so why bother? I don't think they have anything you can't get from liver and shellfish at less PUFA per calorie as you said. I think I'm done with eggs, at least for now.

Yeah, liver pretty much has what you need. And just one oyster can give you half of the zinc you need with only 0.1 PUFA added in one medium oyster. Ray Peat said when he sourced his own eggs via a farmer in Mexico, he could eat two per day, but the latest I heard Ray say on the issue is that he tries to not eat more than one egg per day, partly due to the higher PUFA content in most store-bought eggs. The latest I heard him say via email exchanges with other members is that he is trying to average 1.5 grams PUFA per day and use hydrogenated coconut oil for added fats without adding more PUFA. So it would also seem that he is not getting more than 1 egg per day with his PUFA intake that low.

 

[haidut]

Hence, at least muscle cells seem to prefer storing SFA while burning PUFA when activated/stressed.

Isn't that exactly what I said though - when under stress store SFA and oxidize PUFA?

 

[haidut]

And how do we lose body fat again? Specifically PUFA stores if we dont want them to get released?

There is always some level of lipolysis going on. At rest muscles burn mostly fat so will take care of much of the PUFA and if the liver is healthy it will excrete the rest.

 

[Kartoffel]

Isn't that exactly what I said though - when under stress store SFA and oxidize PUFA?

Yes, I think you did, I was just a little confused when you said that storage contains mostly PUFA. That's why I cited the study by Timmers et al. to show that storage of muscle cells does not contain mostly PUFA, even if animals eat a high PUFA diet. Stressed or not, muscle cells seem to take up and store SFA, and reject PUFA even if they are consumed in larger amounts.

 

[methylenewhite]

I did some PUFA depletion with good results but all this seem to be unnecessary. Now I believe orlistate and supplement some SFA topicaly is the way to avoid extremely restricting diets and deplete PUFA painlessly.

 

[Mito]

Tyw repeatedly stated that pufas were preferentially burned compared to sfas which are stored, I seem to remember he was ridiculed for such claims. At the time his ideas were to be in slight calorific deficit and move a bit more to burn the pufas if he ate any.

Regarding Orion's statement about preferential fatty acid use, this is not true.

PUFA will generally be preferentially used in any context in which they are available.

Regarding stored fatty acids, the more unsaturated a fatty acid is, the more easily mobilised from adipose stores --
Differential mobilization of fatty acids from adipose tissue. - PubMed - NCBI . Note that this is regarding generic lipolysis, and is not specific to skeletal tissue.

Regarding dietary fat (in chylomicrons), the more unsaturated a fatty acid is, the easier it is removed from the chylomicron and used in any tissue --
Uptake of individual fatty acids into adipose tissue in relation to their presence in the diet . NOTE: this makes sense even given Peat's statement that PUFAs are more "water soluble", which really should mean "less hydrophobic". This is for the same reason that Vitamin K2 MK4 is first to be off-loaded (as opposed to K2 MK7) from chylomicrons -- https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2016/12/09/the-ultimate-vitamin-k2-resource/

In a generic sense, it is always more likely that the more Unsaturated Fatty acid gets mobilised and used before more saturated fatty acids. (Exceptions to medium and short chain fatty acids apply).

Regarding storage and use of fatty acids in skeletal tissue specifically, here is a long-ish paper summarising findings -- Fatty acid composition of skeletal muscle reflects dietary fat composition in humans . There is additional commentary by primary author here, which I feel is a better summary. Just skip to the conclusions.

It is obviously a case where there are multiple factors at play wrt skeletal tissue fatty acid use. eg: Habitual exercise will increase fatty acid use (independent of food intake fatty acid composition and calorie balance). Endurance trained athletes have less palmitic and n-6 fatty acids in skeletal tissue, with more saturated fatty acids. Exclusive resistance-training led to PUFA accumulation (this is in line with the observation of n-6 fatty acids in fast-firing muscles of hummingbirds and rattlesnakes). Chronic alteration of Dietary fatty acid composition changes skeletal tissue fatty acid composition. Individual genetic variation. And on and on .....

The mechanics are not simple

.....

 

[Hugh Johnson]

And to be clear the main "stress" we are usually talking about here is just not eating right? Not having sugar to burn, so the body liberates fat stores?

Pretty much. The main function of stress hormones is to provide the cells the energy they need to function when under demand. But especially with combined PUFA and chronic stress the system can get turned on permanently, which means sugar consumption does not properly turn off the stress response.

But you have to understand that "not eating right" is contextual, and if you are running or having emotional experiences more demand is placed on the cells.

 

[cyclops]

and if you are running or having emotional experiences more demand is placed on the cells.

What do you think the best weapons against negative emotional experiences are, if a person cannot currently find a way out of them?

 

[ecstatichamster]

What do you think the best weapons against negative emotional experiences are, if a person cannot currently find a way out of them?

Sugar. Reduced breathing exercises. Thyroid.