Starch gives me optimal strength, energy and physical performance

[RollingStone]

You might be eating less carbohydrate and, being used to burning a lot of carbohydrate for energy, could be low in energy. By eating fruits before working out, insulin is still locking you out from using a lot of fat for energy so you're burning through a lot of glycogen and whatever sugar from the fruit you ate that is in the blood.

Starch breaks down into glucose (no fructose like fruit) and so will refill more muscle glycogen. It's likely that most people will eat a lot more carbohydrates from starch too than they would from fruit, so more strength and weight gain.

Personally, the only time I gain weight is when eating starchy meals after working out, but it can become kind of addictive and can lead to getting a little soft over time. When I've tried using fruit and honey as my only carb sources after a workout and no starch, my weight stays the same. It's not addictive like starch and I don't get the crazy muscle pumps, fast strength gains, or the mildly sedated feeling that I get from starch.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

Has anyone tried to eat starch solely at dinner time or post-workout? When it's most likely to be used to refill muscle glycogen. Followed by a carrot salad before bed. To allow you to feel better the next day.
And eating no-starch during the day.

 

[RollingStone]

Has anyone tried to eat starch solely at dinner time or post-workout? When it's most likely to be used to refill muscle glycogen. Followed by a carrot salad before bed. To allow you to feel better the next day.
And eating no-starch during the day.

Yeah I've done this quite a lot over the years, without the carrot.

 

[Sphagnum]

Has anyone tried to eat starch solely at dinner time or post-workout? When it's most likely to be used to refill muscle glycogen. Followed by a carrot salad before bed. To allow you to feel better the next day.
And eating no-starch during the day.

That’s what I’ve been trying the last couple months.

Raw grass fed A2 milk for breakfast [around 32oz, sometimes a cup over or under]

Fruit [oranges, dates, maybe apples but I suspect they may be causing me issues] sometimes with a small amount r of meat/fish/raw egg

Starch for dinner. [i.e. 350-500g rice]
The starch is almost always low amylose (glutinous rice, waxy potatoes) because it digests so cleanly for me (no bloat/over full feeling and no sides like dandruff) especially if I eat it with little to no fat and little to no protein.
I’ll occasionally have some soaked oats instead, though, if it’s a day where I don’t feel like I need a LOT of starch and can deal with oats.
If it’s early enough in the day I’ll add some butter or coconut oil, and occasionally some meat/fish to the starch. This always slows digestion so if I’m having it with add-ons I need enough time and movement to digest it fully before bed. If it’s 5:30/6pm or later I stay away from any add ons to the rice as my stomach will gurgle with food when I lay down at 9 or so.

I have some similar mind/body differences as you with starch being there or not, so I’m thinking about cycling starch days to find a balance. I’m just worried about cortisol spiking without starch which happened to me when I had cut it out completely. It was hell and I didn’t realize that’s what the cause was until later. Don’t ever want to go back to that feeling haha

 

[Quelsatron]

Ever since I started "peating", I basically made little progress in the gym and my body composition got worse: lost some muscle, gained bodyfat. Gym sessions were draining me. All this time I thought it was the hypothyroidism. Or not enough calories.
Adding starch daily in my diet significantly brings my strength, physical performance, energy in and outside of the gym to optimal levels. On fruits and milk only, I feel like I'm running on "empty tank", on starch + fruits, I feel I'm running a full tank, and have a big reservoir of energy that is slowly released.
I think starch is much more effective at refilling liver and muscle glycogen.
And once again, I mention it's not the calories, I'm actually eating less calories when I include starch in my diet.
And my daytime temps are quite good on High carb(starch + fruits) and Low/moderate Fat. Last week I hit 37.5 and 37.8 post-workout, and I'm off thyroid meds.
I also have excellent blood sugar control with starch, as long as I don't go crazy with my fat intake.
I'm continental / Eastern european, my descendants must have eaten lots of starch.


I am also able to concentrate on mental tasks for longer when I include starch in my diet.
The only advantage I felt from dropping starch was that fruits + milk gave me a better mental state, and I felt more positive, zen and optimistic about life. But my intellectual capacity / ability to concentrate on tasks was bad.
The disadvantage with starch included in diet: I tend to get moments of sadness, minor, depression, regret and ruminating thoughts about past mistakes.
The payoffs in favor of starch are too big to neglect.

Guess I will have to make sure I optimize my digestion of starch as best as I can do it. Cascara daily, lots of Magnesium...


To summarize:

Zero starch(fruits and milk only): Poor strength, poor physical performance, poor energy levels in and outside the gym. Mentally fatigued, poor ability to work on job-related tasks. Still chronically bloated and sometimes constipated. But feeling more zen, "loving", and optimistic about life.

Starch + fruits: optimal strength, physical performance, energy in and outside of the gym. Higher mental stamina, better ability to work on job-related tasks. Still chronically bloated. Depressions tends to creep in, feelings of not being enough.

What starches are you eating? Different starches have different structures, contains fibers, nutrients, gluten, etc, and can even digest differently depending on preparation and meal composition, I feel for example that mashed potatoes and oven baked in oil digest differently, or even mashed vs unmashed, where mashed sort of gives me a bloated feeling with gas and weird poops. Starches also typically have less liquids than milk or fruit, 80 calories of boiled potato come with 77 grams of water, vs 80 calories of lactose in milk which come with 360(!) grams of water. Watery fruit (kiwis, oranges, pineapple, apple) come with 85 g of water for 40-50 calories of sugars, but bananas clock in at a respectable 100 calories for 77 grams of water. And potatoes are a very low density carbohydrate relative to flours and rice, just normal bread has 200-300 calories for 35 grams of water. Then there's also the salt issue, in that only madmen eat salted fruits or milk, while starches are liberally salted. Just drinking too much water at the end of my workday can disrupt my evening and make me cold and tired. Then there's also the other nutrients, I don't know what you eat but generally meat and potatoes (especially pork, something with thiamine i suspect) makes me feel fantastic, and that's a very well balanced meal in terms of macronutrients.

Milk doesn't make me satiated, and fruit or sugars actually makes me feel bad when eating it as a standalone meal, like the sugars are just immediately consumed and then my blood sugar crashes and makes me feel miserable. It's like they don't do anything to keep me in a post-feed satiety state and instead just rush me faster to the point where I have blurry eyesight and feel weak and cold.

 

[aniciete]

What starches are you eating? Different starches have different structures, contains fibers, nutrients, gluten, etc, and can even digest differently depending on preparation and meal composition, I feel for example that mashed potatoes and oven baked in oil digest differently, or even mashed vs unmashed, where mashed sort of gives me a bloated feeling with gas and weird poops. Starches also typically have less liquids than milk or fruit, 80 calories of boiled potato come with 77 grams of water, vs 80 calories of lactose in milk which come with 360(!) grams of water. Watery fruit (kiwis, oranges, pineapple, apple) come with 85 g of water for 40-50 calories of sugars, but bananas clock in at a respectable 100 calories for 77 grams of water. And potatoes are a very low density carbohydrate relative to flours and rice, just normal bread has 200-300 calories for 35 grams of water. Then there's also the salt issue, in that only madmen eat salted fruits or milk, while starches are liberally salted. Just drinking too much water at the end of my workday can disrupt my evening and make me cold and tired. Then there's also the other nutrients, I don't know what you eat but generally meat and potatoes (especially pork, something with thiamine i suspect) makes me feel fantastic, and that's a very well balanced meal in terms of macronutrients.

Milk doesn't make me satiated, and fruit or sugars actually makes me feel bad when eating it as a standalone meal, like the sugars are just immediately consumed and then my blood sugar crashes and makes me feel miserable. It's like they don't do anything to keep me in a post-feed satiety state and instead just rush me faster to the point where I have blurry eyesight and feel weak and cold.

What’s the best way you have found to cook potatoes? Oven baked?

 

[Quelsatron]

What’s the best way you have found to cook potatoes? Oven baked?

oven baked is tastiest, and you do get a little kick out of eating something really tasty though it might not have anything to do with a health response, but I'm a bit sketchy about the oil and smoke points, I even started using rapeseed oil because I'd rather eat unsmoked PUFA than post smoke saturated fats. I really don't have any genuine insight on cooking methods, you could probably experiment your way to my level of experience in a few weeks, and any difference I've found is subtle aside from mashed potatoes (and even that difference is kind of minor). But oven baked, 200-250 C, coated in oil with liberal amounts of salt, pepper and cayenne, until they're crispy and nice was what I ate when I felt the best, and that was with fried pork cutlets and chili bearnaise sauce. (I ate the same dinner almost every day for like a month, and I think it would have gone even better with milk for calcium).

You'll just have to experiment on your own, but I think you can apply common sense and eat an actual meal and not some weird peaty abomination, it's easy to over-intellectualize with all the stuff you read here and forego common sense. If people tend to eat a certain style of meal it's usually because it's a pretty solid concoction, pasta bolognaise and not potato juice with gelatin.

 

[youngsinatra]

What kind of starches do you consume mainly in the last days?

White potatoes definitely mess with neurotransmitters (acetylcholine) due to solanine in my experience.

Redsun wrote: (Link)
„If hes eating a lot of potatoes, than likely he is getting cholinergic reaction from them. Potatoes have solanine which inhibits acetylcholinesterase (which breaks down Ach). It has a long half life of 21 hours so frequent consumption of potatoes can lead to mild cholinergic toxicity symptoms because Ach is not being broken down at the normal rate. This higher activity of Ach at muscarinic receptors in the bladder triggers the detrusor muscle to contract too much, which gives the urge to urinate even if you little urine. This Ach build up also contributes to fatigue.

He should stop the potatoes and replace the starch with rice, yams, sweet potatoes (they dont contain toxic glycoalkaloids like solanin), white flour products (occasionally). His frequent urination should go away and so he'll be able to sleep. His focus, anxiety and other things should improve once he can sleep through the night again.“

High acetylcholine causes a very depressed phenotype.

 

[76er]

I eat about 180g of steak fries with a 6oz steak (or a burger) at night (perhaps 4 or 5 times a week).

The fries are organic peeled Russet potatoes that are thickly sliced and oven baked at 450 degrees for 40 minutes.
The pan is slightly greased with beef tallow.

I then freeze the fries and when ready to eat I pan fry'em (not thawed) in about a tablespoon of tallow.

Yum. Fills me up cheaply and that way I can have less steak for dinner. No cravings after dinner.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

What kind of starches do you consume mainly in the last days?

Oat flakes, couscous, bulgur, basmati rice, multigrain bread.
White potatoes are the devil. Strongly affect my mood and outlook on life negatively. Literally giving me an existential crisis whenever I consume them.

I think I’m going to drop starch yet again. And try fruits + raw milk + meat + honey

 

[Nighteyes]

Oat flakes, couscous, bulgur, basmati rice, multigrain bread.
White potatoes are the devil. Strongly affect my mood and outlook on life negatively. Literally giving me an existential crisis whenever I consume them.

I think I’m going to drop starch yet again. And try fruits + raw milk + meat.

Yes, On and off that wagon again and again.. I know the feeling. Currently trialing parboiled rice. I so so wish potatoes did not have solanine and oxalate.

 

[Hayley]

Same thing for me, I went back to more or less Vertical diet style of eating with white rice making up a large chunk of my carb intake. I felt like trying to get so many of my carbs from sugar and fruit made my blood sugar disregulated and I always had that up and down/crashing feeling, not sustained energy.

 

[aniciete]

Rinse n repeat

 

[GreekDemiGod]

Same thing for me, I went back to more or less Vertical diet style of eating with white rice making up a large chunk of my carb intake. I felt like trying to get so many of my carbs from sugar and fruit made my blood sugar disregulated and I always had that up and down/crashing feeling, not sustained energy.

I recently bought a glucometer and curious to test myself once I'm back on milk-meat-fruits-honey.
Does sugar raise your blood sugar significantly after all? I need to read up more on this. I get that starch is more insulin promoting than sugar, but from my testing, starch only mildly raised my blood sugar. It was only high starch + high fat a problem, that gave me high elevated blood sugar for a prolonged period of a few hours.
AFAIK, high-carb/ high-carb vegans have excellent blood sugar regulations.
What kind of a blood sugar response would a high sugar + moderate SFA meal give?(fruits + cheese, for example)?

 

[Herbie]

Literally giving me an existential crisis whenever I consume them.

Lol yeah

 

[Hayley]

I recently bought a glucometer and curious to test myself once I'm back on milk-meat-fruits-honey.
Does sugar raise your blood sugar significantly after all? I need to read up more on this. I get that starch is more insulin promoting than sugar, but from my testing, starch only mildly raised my blood sugar. It was only high starch + high fat a problem, that gave me high elevated blood sugar for a prolonged period of a few hours.
AFAIK, high-carb/ high-carb vegans have excellent blood sugar regulations.
What kind of a blood sugar response would a high sugar + moderate SFA meal give?(fruits + cheese, for example)?

I’m assuming it does based on the fact its the go to for low blood sugar moments for diabetics, but good question maybe pairing the sugar with other things in a certain way makes it better. As to the high fat thing, I remember my diabetic friend saying something about that how If they have a high carb high fat meal like pizza they will have spiked blood sugar but much later, so I guess it’s because the fat slows digestion of the sugar.

 

[TheSir]

Oat flakes, couscous, bulgur, basmati rice, multigrain bread.
White potatoes are the devil. Strongly affect my mood and outlook on life negatively. Literally giving me an existential crisis whenever I consume them.

I think I’m going to drop starch yet again. And try fruits + raw milk + meat + honey

You could first try an intermediate step and drop all grains except white rice (even better if you replace basmati with jasmine, better digestibility and more tasty too). Something like multigrain bread can easily cause a host of problems already by itself. While some people do bad on grains and starches alike, many people who cant stand grains can still eat starches.

 

[neu4]

I feel bad on fruits.

I want to split my carbohydrates source as follow : 75% complex carbs / 25% sugars.

Complex carbs : potatoes. Could be rice but potato is more nutrient-dense.
Sugars : milk and yogurt. A little fruit.

 

[Ritchie]

Something else to consider when cutting out starch, which is such a satiating and dense form of nutrition, is that you will inevitably raise your meat/protein intake.. And this may go up quite drastically, simply because.. well what else are you going to eat? You can't eat fresh fruit all day (unless maybe if you're living in thailand), neither can you just eat honey, or copious amounts of cane sugar, or just drink juice, cokes or eat carrot salads all day haha.. so you're most likely going to be eating high protein meals along with the juice/coke/coffee and sugar.. or drinking alot of milk and eating cheese... The high protein meals may consist of meat, eggs, liver, shell fish, milk and so forth.. but all of them, at least to become satiated, will be high protein meals... probably way higher protein than your body needs and so alot of that will be going through gluconeogenesis (which of course we want to avoid), along with excess aminos taxing the kidneys and raising nitric oxide and all the other issues of such high protein (high iron, high methionine and tryptophan, high phosphorus and so forth)..

Starch generally eliminates this problem, because you can eat satisfying and satiating meals, while not over doing the protein. Ie potatoes with small amount of meat, or rice with a small amount of shell fish, pasta with some protein source or oatmeal with milk, fruit and honey, etc... all while still consuming juice or coke or coffee and sugar etc.. and some good fats like coconut, olive oil, butter, chocolate or macadamia/avocado.. and that is a recipe for a very nutritious, energising, calming and satiating way of eating.

Personally, I think unless your digestive system is completely cooked and you simply can't digest starch (which would be a very tiny percentage) then it is just silly to wipe starches out of your diet.

 

[Quelsatron]

Something else to consider when cutting out starch, which is such a satiating and dense form of nutrition, is that you will inevitably raise your meat/protein intake.. And this may go up quite drastically, simply because.. well what else are you going to eat? You can't eat fresh fruit all day (unless maybe if you're living in thailand), neither can you just eat honey, or copious amounts of cane sugar, or just drink juice, cokes or eat carrot salads all day haha.. so you're most likely going to be eating high protein meals along with the juice/coke/coffee and sugar.. or drinking alot of milk and eating cheese... The high protein meals may consist of meat, eggs, liver, shell fish, milk and so forth.. but all of them, at least to become satiated, will be high protein meals... probably way higher protein than your body needs and so alot of that will be going through gluconeogenesis (which of course we want to avoid), along with excess aminos taxing the kidneys and raising nitric oxide and all the other issues of such high protein (high iron, high methionine and tryptophan, high phosphorus and so forth)..

Starch generally eliminates this problem, because you can eat satisfying and satiating meals, while not over doing the protein. Ie potatoes with small amount of meat, or rice with a small amount of shell fish, pasta with some protein source or oatmeal with milk, fruit and honey, etc... all while still consuming juice or coke or coffee and sugar etc.. and some good fats like coconut, olive oil, butter, chocolate or macadamia/avocado.. and that is a recipe for a very nutritious, energising, calming and satiating way of eating.

Personally, I think unless your digestive system is completely cooked and you simply can't digest starch (which would be a very tiny percentage) then it is just silly to wipe starches out of your diet.

This, starch is a component of pretty much every dish there is, it simply works. High protein meals without enough starch makes me feel awful, but an equivalent amount of meat with a serving of potatoes on the other hand results in a balanced feeling. You can argue about the unavailability of starch for prehistoric man, but those times are a distant reconstruction. Starch on the other hand is in every single civilization for thousands of years, the evidence is, well, evident. (Of course, it might not work for everyone, but generally it's a good food)