I broke a week long water fast late last year - this was a last ditch effort to try and clean up some bad health issues (allergies, joint pain, indigestion, depression, insomnia etc etc)... I had used fasts before to fix me up whenever I was feeling off, they always seemed to do more good than harm - but I usually kept them shorter to around 3 days. For many years I practiced calorie restriction and intermittent fasting and low sugar. There was a night after breaking the fast I also recall supplementing tryptophan as a sleep aid (a foolish attempt to try to help beat the blues), I fell asleep fast but woke up feeling just miserable the next day- it made me start to seriously question the value of tryptophan / serotonin; in all my years of supplementing with tyrosine/tryptophan combo (as is commonly suggested by various health gurus) I would always end up shying away from the tryptophan - the theory of it balancing out the serotonin made sense to me at the time but I never experienced the results.... I would begrudgingly take it and think to myself (gee I hope my reserves are going to balance out soon). Sigh...
Coming out of the fast I did not feel so great, the joint pain was gone but everything else seemed to have become worse, it was a huge let down, I then noticed my oral temperature was not going over 97.6 or so all day long, this persisted for weeks. When I broke the fast the first things I craved were cottage cheese and orange juice, the craving persisted for weeks - it was a bit odd for me - neither items were on my daily menu before. So one day I was wondering if anyone else had the same cravings / what it all meant - I typed in a silly question to google like 'i'm depressed, low metabolism, why do i always want to eat cottage cheese' this took me to the works of Ray Peat. I read for many days and it all made so much sense to me - I told myself: look you have been low calorie, low appetite, low sugar for so long and have nothing good to show for it (aside from not being obese)- let's try the opposite.
Another interesting tidbit is I have always craved aspirin, I have loved it for decades now, I always have felt better on it - but I was so afraid to use it for long stretches because of all of the propaganda. I think it was reading RP writings on aspirin that specifically convinced me this man is a genius.
The status-quo model of what is good and is not good for you is completely broken, if it weren't broken forums like this would not exist. It is obvious to me true health must be very far from that model and RP is the one I have found to present the most convincing and practicable - results driven - easy to achieve re-modeling so to speak.