How much protein would you estimate you were eating on average? "a steak once" and "some cheese" doesn't sound like that much overall. Maybe you switched from Fcp to Cfp, and it's still energy vs. brotein? Just the other high energy side of the swamp?
In any case, it sounds great. Glad you're continuing to need less and less thyroid :)
I do suspect carbs "burn hotter" or maybe it's just sugar. That's why Peaters like it Coconut oil, too! I eat a bunch this week and I'm consistently running half a degree (of Freedom) hotter than on just cream.
What even *is* this metabolic swamp? Why would mixed macros cause slow metabolism, ketosis bypass that, but glucose-only (carbosis??) works fine?
Could it be that slightly-blocked glycolysis is a problem if you're trying to do both at once, but if you're drowning in carbs the pathway works well enough for full power? Why for God's sake? And if you're over-driving it, where else is the excess sugar pressure going? I hope not into sorbitol.....
I suspect the issue with the swamp is a problem in fuel switching. I'm not entirely sure what causes it. Some claim it is always an issue ("The Randle Cycle") but I think we have some darn good evidence that it used to mostly work for most people most of the time - think French Paradox. Plenty of people used to mix carbs & fats for a long time with no issues.
So I wonder if it's caused by something else, like PUFA. How exactly does PUFA prohibit correct/efficient fuel switching? Don't know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randle_cycle is interesting. That's implying that fatty acids shut out glucose metabolism at a cellular level. (Which is fascinating, I would have guessed that burning glucose was a priority. Maybe *that's* why the brain won't accept fats?!)
That's going to be a fast process (seconds at the most, and probably pretty smooth with no interruption of energy supply). And also it's going to be very well debugged since it probably dates back to before multicellular life. It probably works the same way in yeast.
PUFAs, it seems, cause absolute metabolic havoc. "Glycolysis is blocked" would be fine for messing up this Randle Cycle, but only yesterday I was reading that excessive double-bonds in fats just literally cause mitochondria to explode. Which is the sort of thing you might imagine to be a clue.
It also seems a bit paradoxical. PUFAs are not some weird space-chemical. Plant seeds are full of them. Some animals must eat seeds.
I have a new source. I'd heard of Cate Shanahan, but I thought she was a medical doctor or some sort of herbalist or osteopath or something.
She is, but she *trained* as a biochemist and then abandoned her PhD when she realised that PhDs are a mug's game and became a doctor instead.
Suddenly I got interested in what she has to say, and it turns out she's found all sorts of interesting gears-level things.
All of a sudden, this is all starting to look like a straightforward battle between biochemistry and medical "science", and I know which side my money's on there.
Although, I must be careful to remember the physics vs geology wars.....
Yea she's quite deep in the biochem stuff. Didn't know she started a PhD in it though.
My issue with solutions like "the Randle cycle did it" is that they prove too much - they prove that we've always been fat and at war with Swampasia.
But clearly that's wrong; my grandparents never ate keto/carbo and they were fine. They might not've eaten a bodybuilder diet, but they also never restricted protein or BCAAs. I remember carbs, meat, cheese, and dairy combined for nearly every meal.
Lots of home-made cookies and cakes that consisted solely of flour, sugar, & butter.
So, like you say, evolutionarily we SHOULD be able to Randle the shit out of this just fine.
I think people in good health should be able to just eat whatever they like from the palette of things humans are evolved to eat without ever needing to think about any of it more deeply than: 'I really fancy an orange. I wonder if there are any oranges around?'
Obviously if there's literally none of something essential in any of the foods available you can get in trouble, but barring that, pretty much anything should be fine.
Another thing that's puzzling me is: Where is the low protein thing fitting in? For ketosis it's plausible that protein turning into glucose can keep you out of keto. But why the LP bit in HCLFLP?
The branch-chain amino acids probably need to get broken up in the peroxisomes. If PUFAs also need to go through the peroxisomes then it's possible they're competing for that pathway. But I'm just making that up, obviously. And even if it's true, I think you might be able to increase the capacity of peroxisomes as necessary. I know yeasts can.
We're basically yeasts, with a few frills here and there.
Something I've learned is a body can take so much of a toxic or non-optimal substance and once you start overwhelming its mechanisms to deal with it, then bad stuff (tm) starts showing up. The trace amount of PUFA we historically ate from eating plant seeds was far less than the PUFA seed concentrate we eat today in everything.
I had this when I tried the potato hack diet, eating only potatoes. Solanine from potatoes take more than 24 hours to be fully cleared out of the body, so you have a build up effect if all you are eating are potatoes. I started feeling 'shitty' on the diet and was about to quit.
Solanine is concentrated in the skin of potatoes, so I started hard core peeling my potatoes and coring out anything that looked like a potato skin ingrowth. Voila, my shitty feelings went away since I removed the vast majority of Solanine in my diet and my body was able to handle the rest that was on the inside of the Potato.
I stayed on the diet for a month plus, and naturally ended up eating ~1600 calories day, lost weight, was fairly craving free, had increased body temperature and was overall fine. I stopped because I had hard time activating my leg muscles after a couple hour hike on the down hill portion and driving my car was a bit of a will power push to consistently depress the gas pedal!!! I'm guessing that came from electrolyte and other nutrition issues in the diet.
Wow, a month of only potatoes! It wouldn't surprise me if you were running short of something. I'd imagine if you put in the odd steak for micronutrients it would probably be way more sustainable, and it might even still work.
> How much protein would you estimate you were eating on average?
Not much, I think in the last two weeks I've probably accounted for maybe two steaks and three blocks of cheese, and a few eggs. I was trying to stick to roughly ex150ish amounts whilst letting my appetite guide me, but it's not like I've got protein cravings or anything.
On the other hand, butter tastes great, and sugar is getting very boring.... I had porridge with maple syrup this morning and the maple syrup just spoiled it so I tried using melted butter as a topping as well and that was lovely!
I think I'm very much doing HCLFLP at the moment, but I didn't plan this experiment it just happened.
It's really strange. Most of the time I'm fizzing with energy. Twice in the last four days I've nearly got into a fight with a stranger. As a youngster that wouldn't have been more than an odd coincidence, but as a usually very even-tempered old man who is done with sport it's just weird.
How much protein would you estimate you were eating on average? "a steak once" and "some cheese" doesn't sound like that much overall. Maybe you switched from Fcp to Cfp, and it's still energy vs. brotein? Just the other high energy side of the swamp?
In any case, it sounds great. Glad you're continuing to need less and less thyroid :)
I do suspect carbs "burn hotter" or maybe it's just sugar. That's why Peaters like it Coconut oil, too! I eat a bunch this week and I'm consistently running half a degree (of Freedom) hotter than on just cream.
What even *is* this metabolic swamp? Why would mixed macros cause slow metabolism, ketosis bypass that, but glucose-only (carbosis??) works fine?
Could it be that slightly-blocked glycolysis is a problem if you're trying to do both at once, but if you're drowning in carbs the pathway works well enough for full power? Why for God's sake? And if you're over-driving it, where else is the excess sugar pressure going? I hope not into sorbitol.....
I suspect the issue with the swamp is a problem in fuel switching. I'm not entirely sure what causes it. Some claim it is always an issue ("The Randle Cycle") but I think we have some darn good evidence that it used to mostly work for most people most of the time - think French Paradox. Plenty of people used to mix carbs & fats for a long time with no issues.
So I wonder if it's caused by something else, like PUFA. How exactly does PUFA prohibit correct/efficient fuel switching? Don't know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randle_cycle is interesting. That's implying that fatty acids shut out glucose metabolism at a cellular level. (Which is fascinating, I would have guessed that burning glucose was a priority. Maybe *that's* why the brain won't accept fats?!)
That's going to be a fast process (seconds at the most, and probably pretty smooth with no interruption of energy supply). And also it's going to be very well debugged since it probably dates back to before multicellular life. It probably works the same way in yeast.
PUFAs, it seems, cause absolute metabolic havoc. "Glycolysis is blocked" would be fine for messing up this Randle Cycle, but only yesterday I was reading that excessive double-bonds in fats just literally cause mitochondria to explode. Which is the sort of thing you might imagine to be a clue.
It also seems a bit paradoxical. PUFAs are not some weird space-chemical. Plant seeds are full of them. Some animals must eat seeds.
I have a new source. I'd heard of Cate Shanahan, but I thought she was a medical doctor or some sort of herbalist or osteopath or something.
She is, but she *trained* as a biochemist and then abandoned her PhD when she realised that PhDs are a mug's game and became a doctor instead.
Suddenly I got interested in what she has to say, and it turns out she's found all sorts of interesting gears-level things.
All of a sudden, this is all starting to look like a straightforward battle between biochemistry and medical "science", and I know which side my money's on there.
Although, I must be careful to remember the physics vs geology wars.....
Yea she's quite deep in the biochem stuff. Didn't know she started a PhD in it though.
My issue with solutions like "the Randle cycle did it" is that they prove too much - they prove that we've always been fat and at war with Swampasia.
But clearly that's wrong; my grandparents never ate keto/carbo and they were fine. They might not've eaten a bodybuilder diet, but they also never restricted protein or BCAAs. I remember carbs, meat, cheese, and dairy combined for nearly every meal.
Lots of home-made cookies and cakes that consisted solely of flour, sugar, & butter.
So, like you say, evolutionarily we SHOULD be able to Randle the shit out of this just fine.
Unless something broke the Randle cycle? But how?
All agreed. Something somewhere is broken.
I think people in good health should be able to just eat whatever they like from the palette of things humans are evolved to eat without ever needing to think about any of it more deeply than: 'I really fancy an orange. I wonder if there are any oranges around?'
Obviously if there's literally none of something essential in any of the foods available you can get in trouble, but barring that, pretty much anything should be fine.
Another thing that's puzzling me is: Where is the low protein thing fitting in? For ketosis it's plausible that protein turning into glucose can keep you out of keto. But why the LP bit in HCLFLP?
The branch-chain amino acids probably need to get broken up in the peroxisomes. If PUFAs also need to go through the peroxisomes then it's possible they're competing for that pathway. But I'm just making that up, obviously. And even if it's true, I think you might be able to increase the capacity of peroxisomes as necessary. I know yeasts can.
We're basically yeasts, with a few frills here and there.
I wonder if the protein stuff is just that BCAAs also go into the krebs cycle, and now you're swamping.
Something I've learned is a body can take so much of a toxic or non-optimal substance and once you start overwhelming its mechanisms to deal with it, then bad stuff (tm) starts showing up. The trace amount of PUFA we historically ate from eating plant seeds was far less than the PUFA seed concentrate we eat today in everything.
I had this when I tried the potato hack diet, eating only potatoes. Solanine from potatoes take more than 24 hours to be fully cleared out of the body, so you have a build up effect if all you are eating are potatoes. I started feeling 'shitty' on the diet and was about to quit.
Solanine is concentrated in the skin of potatoes, so I started hard core peeling my potatoes and coring out anything that looked like a potato skin ingrowth. Voila, my shitty feelings went away since I removed the vast majority of Solanine in my diet and my body was able to handle the rest that was on the inside of the Potato.
I stayed on the diet for a month plus, and naturally ended up eating ~1600 calories day, lost weight, was fairly craving free, had increased body temperature and was overall fine. I stopped because I had hard time activating my leg muscles after a couple hour hike on the down hill portion and driving my car was a bit of a will power push to consistently depress the gas pedal!!! I'm guessing that came from electrolyte and other nutrition issues in the diet.
Funny you should mention that:
https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/potato-skins-jesus
Wow, a month of only potatoes! It wouldn't surprise me if you were running short of something. I'd imagine if you put in the odd steak for micronutrients it would probably be way more sustainable, and it might even still work.
> How much protein would you estimate you were eating on average?
Not much, I think in the last two weeks I've probably accounted for maybe two steaks and three blocks of cheese, and a few eggs. I was trying to stick to roughly ex150ish amounts whilst letting my appetite guide me, but it's not like I've got protein cravings or anything.
On the other hand, butter tastes great, and sugar is getting very boring.... I had porridge with maple syrup this morning and the maple syrup just spoiled it so I tried using melted butter as a topping as well and that was lovely!
I think I'm very much doing HCLFLP at the moment, but I didn't plan this experiment it just happened.
It's really strange. Most of the time I'm fizzing with energy. Twice in the last four days I've nearly got into a fight with a stranger. As a youngster that wouldn't have been more than an odd coincidence, but as a usually very even-tempered old man who is done with sport it's just weird.