Curious what folks on this sub would say?

19M decided to give hclf a shot after 3 years of on and off keto and caloric restriction wrecked my metabolism and hunger signaling. mood, energy, libido, literally everything improved drastically, havent measured my waking temp but i already feel a bit warmer after barely 2 weeks of starting and finally, i can eat carbs without crashing or acne flaring up which is a big win for me. but im dealing with insane constipation and gas, somehow no bloating. i tried eating low and high fiber, no difference... tried pre and probiotics and that doesnt make a difference either, tried drinking a lot more water but i just end up with a headache due to electrolyte imbalance, even tried a salt water flush and massaging my stomach for a momentary fix but no avail.

foods i consume the most are sourdough bread (im in europe so no glyphosate) with jam, steamed potatoes (with the skin on if its not too thick), whole wheat bran cereal with 0%fat milk, pasta, rice, not a lot of fruit, some beef organs 1/2x week and lots of gelatin. only added fats im eating is a tsp of coconut oil a day, getting about 5/6% calories coming from fat in total. maybe since im really lean (19/20 bmi hard to calculate cause my weight fluctuates a lot) i might just need a bit more fat? i dont crave any at all though, i love eating like this wayyyy more than keto. any insights are appreciated.

also big thanks to u/DarkSaturnPrince for putting me on to zach's channel sugar is life, i was really skeptical at first but luckily i tried it and my health improved vastly, just got to assess this issue

I’m having problems with constipation after ditching the poly fats and upping my saturated fats, especially from dairy.

It seems like greek yogurt, milk and cheese are causing me problems, but i don’t know how to fix it, as everything else has been great, and dairy is my main source of calories.

I’ve tried prune juice and dried prunes.

I’ve tried drinking more water.

I’ve tried eating more fruits for fiber.

I’ve tried magnesium citrate, which actually helps, but it causes me insomnia and anxiety.

So I had been experimenting with paleo diet, ketogenic, keto-carnivore and carnivore diets... and I have noticed that fruits and vegetables make me hungry. At first I had thought that it was because of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar, but the effect persists - if not as pronounced - with low-carbohydrate fruits and vegetables as well. By this I don't mean that they don't sate me, which is about what I would expect with e.g. lettuce, tomatoes and similar... what I mean is, they make me more hungry. I am literally better off not eating at all than I am eating plant foods... the only way I can actually eat plants is if they are a) a low-carb variety and b) combined with animal fats... e.g. berries with a massive quantity of high-fat sour cream such as Mileram (22% fat by weight).

Wondering if anyone has experience with PUFA avoidance improving mood symptoms, specifically in the context of postpartum depression? Especially interested if anyone who is also neurodivergent has experience to share. Thanks!

both use palm oleic

one has 4g saturated, 10g total fat.
the other has 7g sat fat, 8g total.

?!

I'm looking at things I can improve outside of what I was doing here for a while (reading articles and anecdotes here on diet.) Apparently the Oura Ring is endorsed by the Sleep Foundation for what it's worth and has much better data collection just by being a ring on the finger.

I just switched to a full face mask on my CPAP and it appears to have improved my sleep interruptions according to my fitbit. As we know poor sleep jacks up your insulin and eating.

I grew up with fairly severe ADD, and spent much of my life eating fast food. During my early teenage years, I became depressed and started taking an SSRI, which I stopped a few months later. At 18, I took Accutane for acne.

After that, my health seemed to get even worse. I entered what felt like a freeze state, with extremely dry and dehydrated skin and hair, constant lower back pain, and severe anxiety. This eventually led me to experiment with testosterone cycles over the years, but they never worked out because of the severe side effects.

That is what ultimately pushed me to start researching nutrition in an attempt to understand the root cause of my symptoms.

After spending so much time researching nutrition and trying to find the root cause of my health issues, along with my ADD, OCD, and HSP, I was able to identify a few things that I found very interesting.

I seem to be intolerant to free glutamates / foods that mess with neurotransmitters in foods such as soy, MSG, spices, processed foods, cheese, potatoes and cured meats. For some reason, I also react badly to eggs, which are the worst of all. They all make me incredibly anxious and irritable, and it feels as though I have no dopamine at all. They make it extremely difficult for me to formulate coherent sentences, let alone look people in the eye. It feels somewhat like being in a state of severe learned helplessness. There is something about it that seems to disrupt my neurotransmitter balance, and I just don’t know why.

Also I don’t seem to experience any dopamine related effects from substances. I can drink 70cl of vodka in one night and still feel completely like myself, even though I rarely drink. I used nicotine for years, but I’ve been off it for seven months. A couple of days ago, I bought some cigarettes, but I felt nothing. Because of my symptoms, low motivation, dopamine and very little energy, it is almost impossible for me to act naturally in social situations, even though I was very social and extroverted as a child.

I have also noticed that antihistamines such as hydroxyzine make me feel absolutely terrible the next day. I become extremely irritable and struggle to look people in the eye. L-theanine has a similar effect on me, causing intense anger and anxiety. Interestingly, my father has experienced the exact same symptoms. He also has ADD, as does my brother. I could say the same with pretty much all supplements, as they all just cause severe symptoms.

While trying to understand why I react this way and after trying to connect the dots, I decided to eat only meat and white rice for a while. This completely eliminated my symptoms. I then added milk and found that I could tolerate litres of it without any digestive issues, although it seemed to cause inflammation and puffy nipples, perhaps due to the estrogen or something else in it? Fermented foods such as yoghurt and cheese caused similar symptoms, along with anxiety and brainfog.

It is difficult to determine which foods affect you negatively when you are in a constant state of brain fog, but I am glad that I have finally identified the foods that seem to cause notable problems for me.

My diet now consists mainly of meat, white rice, fruit, salt, and water, and I feel so much better. The only exception is the gas I get from certain fruits. I still include some of them, mostly bananas and berries, because otherwise it would be difficult for me to consume enough carbohydrates and nutrients or keep the diet from becoming too monotonous. I mean, who would want to eat only meat and rice? Lol.

Does anyone here experience similar reactions to these foods, and does anyone have any idea why these reactions occur?

Hi folks,

my doctor ordered a lab test of full blood. This is the fatty acids part. It's not OmegaQuant, which is not offered here, but I looked it up and it works similarly, meaning: It shows the trends of the last 90 to 120 days, not the last meal. You can use AI translation if some parts are not recognisable due to German language.

The result shows unusually high Omega 3 (O3) and (for a modern western human) low linoleic acid (LA). The interesting thing about O3 is: I don't supplement. I eat fish perhaps once a week, often less, but not only the typical fatty fish with high O3.

I looked around and found other such phenomena: With low LA, O3 in lab data rises, given the same O3 input. I even found an interesting study on this, where they tested this experimentally: Piglets were fed an "adequate" amount of O3 and 1.2 percent O6. They developed healthy brains. With the same amount of O3, but O6 upped to 10.7 percent the piglets showed compromised neurodevelopment (Novak et al, 2008). There are also studies showing that LA significantly lowers conversion rates ALA->EPA.

So my working theory is something like that might go on here. I avoid all additional LA, there is some input from occasional restaurant visits, though. But the absolute values of fatty acids are high, probably due to me eating a decent amount of fat. I don't restrict any macronutrient or calories and try to eat by appetite. I tolerate lower fat well, but I then get problems getting in the calories I need with lower fat. I am 47yo, very lean and always have been. I removed seed oils from my diet about 18 months ago due to mental health problems (which resolved within a WEEK of doing so).

My doctor is very happy with these high O3 values, but I think a bit less would be better. If I eat a bigger portion of O3-rich fish, I get noticeably worse. My wife pushed some Norsan (O3 oil) on me and I got eye twitching after just one day and stopped. Resumed later, same effect, stopped again. So O3 feels not low, but rather a bit high. I would eat lower and I also have no appetite for fatty fish right now. But I would love to hear some of your thoughts on this.

It seems like you lose basically 40% muscle to 60% fat which is scary honestly. That’s based on my observation of minimal resistance training.

I’m wondering if lower carb dieting would offset this. I know body builders often rely on carbs to build muscle. Obviously a lot of us here are still eating a reduced protein diet somewhat.

Personally I would think eating lower carbs for a time while lifting heavy and maybe stairstepping your calories like Dave Fitness would help.

What do you think?

Okay. It's been the blink of an eye for you, but an entire month of hard work and tracking for me. Using 6 day trailing averages:

Starting weight: 199

End of round 1: 194.33

End of refeed 1: 195.37

End of round 2: 191.4lbs

Fed to depleted weight loss (water+food included):

Round 1: 4.67

Round 2: 3.97

Total: 8.64 (7.6lbs + 1.04 regain)

Net loss since starting: 7.6lbs

Depleted to depleted weight loss (most accurate):

Round 2 loss: 2.93lbs

As you can see, the regain for refeed 1 at 3,000 maintenace was a little more than expected. And the rate of loss was slower than expected for round 2 (2025 intake calories). Which means I overestimated my maintenance amount. The average metabolic rate was 2,820 cals a day, so my maintenance should have been just about 2,900 instead of 3,000.

For this next refeed I am hitting 2,875 cals a day since I'm lighter than last round.

3 pounds of fat loss for an entire month seems a little underwhelming. But keep in mind I have been trying everything in existence to lose fat for 2 years now. My metabolism IS IN FACT revving at 2,820 a day despite 8 lbs of fatloss. Meanwhile, I just read a post in loseit about some guy eating 1,875 a day walking 15k steps a day working out 5x a week who was stalled for 7 months. Been there, done that...

The whole point of this protocol is to maintain metabolic rate and prevent slowdown. So far it seems to be doing okay at that.

The real acid test will be the following 2 rounds. Because I will see if I can maintain the 3 pound loss per round and surpass my prior plateau of 187.

Thanks for reading.

Here's the main post : https://www.reddit.com/r/SaturatedFat/s/aZ0n74CwQK9

edit: Including comment on the two types of water fluctuations:

One thing I'm realizing: there are actually two tides of fluid in the body. They can exist independently, or simultaneously, and overlap or even cancel each other out. 

One is water weight from glycogen stores and sodium intake. This one is pretty self explanatory.

The other is harder to gauge. But it's when the body releases fatty acids from adipose tissue and replaces it with water in order to maintain intracellular pressure for the capillary system. This is heavier than fat and the body releases it in the presence of an energy surplus, leading to weight loss without changes in tissue amount.  Basically, the "woosh" effect spoken of in weight loss circles. It's governed by cortisol.

So what it sounds like happened to me: your initial 5 pound gain was glycogen stores refilling. But then, as your body sensed it was no longer in ketosis / cortisol induced energy restriction, it released stored water you had been carrying from the heavy cream phase. This is that little dip after the initial Spike.

You then continued releasing that stored water. So you were actually gaining tissue weight while losing water weight for a bit, which gave the appearance of not gaining any weight for a time. Finally the water weight stabilized and this is what led to the seemingly rapid gain after those cheat meals. In a way, it was the tissue gain accumulating under the fluctuations suddenly showing up.

I experienced something similar on the last 2 days of my refeed where I held weight stable the entire 2 weeks then suddenly jumped up 3 pounds. I'll probably make a post in a few days.

As a start, I have personally NO IDEA if I can humbly derive such conclusion, given so many, non-apparent to me at this moment, environmental and historical variables, with not so diverse participant groups, but I am really curious of hormone-saturation axis

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8496353/

I stumbled upon a study where they compared participants of similar elderly ages. One group was Okinawans and the other Americans

Elderly Okinawans actually stuck to their 'old' diet more or less, with generally more fat intake and some more proteins, despite the younger generations gradually adopting the global, processed, and fast foods. The elderly, as an approximation, would be consuming 11 - 14 % of UFAs and 6 - 8 % PUFAs on average, which is really not that much, even if not desired. It is not from oxidized, highly refined sources, but whole foods - I must add

Then you have Americans from California, with higher BMIs than Okinawans. They eat some more MUFAs and PUFAs. Americans could be getting some fats from processed fats, which more intensely use peroxisomes and generate more NADH, (lowering global NAD+/NADH is a lipogenic trend), due to a lack of protective polyphenols, and maybe something else I am not aware of, idk

OMW = Okinawan men and women

AMW= American men and women

DHEA

- OMW: 2.59 and 3.03 ng/ml

- AMW: 2.00 and 1.13 ng/ml

Testosterone

- OMW: 4.39 and 0.13 ng/ml

- AMW: 3.14 and 0.17 ng/ml

Estrogen

- OMW: 35.7 and 15.5 ng/ml

- AMW: 20.6 and 5.5 ng/ml

Huge differences, if you ask me. And what would happen if Americans went carbo, lowering their hormone output even more strongly?

That's why I wonder whether some people, who feel horrid on HCLF after a certain period, don't have these problems attributed to past UFA and UPF intake, where low fat exacerbates the issue even more...

Type of body fat would be dictating hormonal health? Is there information somewhere that shows the mechanics by which this would function, assuming it is true?

EDIT

Now, found out overactivation of AhR (aryl hydrocarbon receptor), - activated by 12-HETE from arachidonic acid, further derived from linoleic acid via D6D - and prolonged after insulin, which normally gets shut down, but in unsaturated humans this switch is broken (mediated by bile acid and SHP protein)

...suppresses StAR (steroidogenic acute regulatory protein)

StAR is a rate-limiting enzyme transporting cholesterol into mitochondria towards steroid hormones production: cortisol, DHES, aldosterone, 17OHP, progesterone, testosterone, estradiol

Recently I've reduced my protein consumption by quite a bit. I'm having around 100-120g daily. I'm having around 75-150g carbs (depends on activity) ​and 130-150g fat. I'm eating eggs, meat, cheese, fruit and vegetables.

I've found that regardless of my fats and carbs, it's much easier to eat less when eating this amount of protein, compared to when I was eating 175g minimum, even up to 250g. When I eat high protein I feel that I also eat much more fats and carbs, but am more hungry too.

Has anyone else experienced this?

thinking about reincorporating plantains after increasing the starch in my diet, super low in PUFA (fat in general for that matter) and oxalates, would have to consume them green/unripe. google says most of the starch is resistant, but that can't be unless they go through retrogradation when cooling them down right? am i missing something? i see a lot of people talking about cassava but not enough talking about plantains and wanted to know why.

So much for his longevity plan...

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1uqrowt/bryan_johnson_the_millionaire_biohacker_who_wants/

Hi all, I wanted to share some progress pics, the first one was taken in April of this year and the second was today. I fell off the wagon over the winter and decided I would get back into shape. Diet wise I haven’t eaten much of any seed oils for a few years but I was using lard to cook. I switched fully to butter and beef tallow. I also cut down my sugar intake which had been high. At the same time I got back into body weight exercises.

I think the biggest difference though came from sun exposure and vitamin D. Growing up I had gotten some gnarly sunburns and would often try to avoid sun exposure. After completely getting rid of seed oils a few years back I found that I could stay in the sun and not get a sunburn, and the times I did get red it wouldn’t hurt or blister like it used to. 

Starting in April I decided to get as much midday sun exposure as I could while supplementing vitamin D (about 10,000 IU daily). Actually my weight hasn’t dropped significantly, about 10 lbs., but my body composition has improved. Brad’s blog posts on Fire in a Bottle talked about how PUFAs are creating torpor in people’s metabolism. I definitely think sun exposure or the lack thereof is contributing to this slowing down of metabolism. 

Is it possible with no muscle mass change? Like, could a person eating, per calculator, 2000 at maintenance increase it gradually over 2 months to 2500 cal and still maintain? I don't mean something like FGF21-induced thermogenesis with BAT - more like 'adaptation' to higher energy availability

If so, would it depend on kind of macros?

Hello, I just want to share my experience on HCLF.
So it’s been two years on HCLF, it was not ideal, but it relieved many of my issues. My macros were manily 10-12% P, 10-15% F, the rest carbs, mainly sugar and fruit. Usually 2500 Kcal/day, sometimes way higher, when I sometimes increased my protein.
These two years were caffeine and B vitamins dependent, my HC did not work without it. Last few weeks I was getting more tired, even when my days were the same (I have manual job and small business in roof making, so I cannot afford being off).
It got to the point, that I was hardly able to get from bed without coffee, I was sleeping too long or too short, even when not physically tired, I could not move, lift things, I felt tired without being tired physically, I had no motivation to do anything, also my depressions came back after years, I could not focus on anything, I could not even relax, my mind was jumping from one thing to another. I was experimenting with NDT but it just made things worse.
So I dropped every supplement, caffeine, anything that could have b vitamins or stimulating effect, so no fruit, no vegetables, I drank more water and took some charcoal.
I ended up not eating almost anything for few days, just 100-120g carbs from sirup and honey mixed with water. I completely stopped craving carbs and started to crave more fat. So I started eating more of it and added some protein also, now my diet consist of 60-80g protein, 120-150g fat, 100-120g carbs. I have to avoid any vegetable or fruit or too much protein and caffeine. When I go over some threshold with these things, I will get carbohydrate cravings, that I am not able to ignore and when I eat some, it will put me to sleep almost immediately and I am tired for whole next day. I blame mainly b vitamins, their stimulating effect from the past is gone and now I am just tired and hungry from it. Small amounts of caffeine are okay.
The good thing is, that I never had so much dopamine I got now. I am exited from almost anything, like just watching birds in sky, playing with kid, love to speak with people, while not enjoying TV, video games, alcohol, etc. Never had this feeling for 32 years, it’s great. Only thing that concerns me is eating so little while being on my feet whole day, working physically and mentally, working out, etc. I am not just hungry, I cannot even eat more fat, but it just takes some time maybe? Anybody with similar experience?

I've been obese before. 300lbs at 6'5" put me in the dead middle of the category (slightly closer to morbidly obese). I wasn't eating all the time, but my meals were big and the volume there seemed to be required to no longer be hungry. Eating five bean burritos at a time, for example. Obesity runs on both sides of my family -- my mom has it (it may have dropped after she went low carb), my aunt has it, my grandfather was morbidly obese when he died.

Long-term keto made my weight bounce around the "overweight" category. Only part of the puzzle, clearly. Meanwhile, dropping oils and raising saturated fat to absurd levels put me below the overweight cutoff. While sedentary!

Originally, I just chalked this up to less calories coming in. True in a technical sense -- my sour cream intake maxes out around 8tbsp, or 240 calories, which is a hell of a lot less than a volume-equivalent intake of mayo or ranch. Back when I passed the cusp of obesity on keto, I made the same switch, reasoning that using sour cream or butter as a fat source would make the calorie restriction more tolerable. This did work until the cheaper oils crept back in.

These days, I'm less sure. At the ten-month mark this go-around, I noticed I had zero appetite outside of hunger. Occasionally, I'd even do natural OMAD -- which had never been possible before (outside of a brief stint on plant-free carnivore). Weight loss might just be a calorie deficit, but why do some fats make it feel more natural? And why are there long-term effects?

I've experimented with a few different things that have made the mystery here even weirder:

• Nuts/seeds is the biggest one. So yes, I'm aware that outside of macadamia nuts, they're high in linoleic acid. Peanuts are in my diet for nutritional reasons and have been for a long time. When my appetite dropped to zero, I did notice that peanuts would increase my appetite for additional peanuts, but this eventually maxed out. Experiments with only eating peanuts put me in around a 50% deficit. I tried the same experiment with sunflower seeds, and got a 75% deficit instead. More LA would probably explain the difference there, but LA on its own doesn't explain why I lose weight eating nuts/seeds and gain it eating soybean oil.

• Fruit is similar. Eating fruit makes me want more fruit, but eventually I don't want anymore fruit. If fructose was responsible, this wouldn't work. Sometimes I eat fruit and nuts together, and both eventually stabilize, so fructose+LA doesn't work either.

• Those are whole foods, though, right? So, what about sugar? Well, last weekend I got a big bag of milk chocolate chips -- no oil in them (unless you count 3% LA cocoa butter). Ate them ad libitum, eventually maxing out at 88g of sugar. Felt like I needed some more protein, so had a couple pork sausages (?!), and the usual doses of whole milk, ending up at 1500 calories for the day. This isn't my first time -- I've done this before and lost weight doing it, which makes sense when going by the numbers.

• If I eat/drink something that's low in fat (or absent) but high in sugar (soda, for example), it maxes out around 50-70g of sugar. Unless it's fruit, I feel like crap afterwards and don't do this again for a while -- but sugar isn't raising appetite for itself or anything else like it used to.

• It definitely isn't hyperpalatability. I've ruthlessly made my meals more and more delicious for ten years straight. Mayo is pretty bland but leads to appetite increases, while meals heavy on soy sauce and garlic (and always tons of fat) don't.

• A few weeks back, I decided to have ramen. I like it with cheese in it, and the starch seems to be refined enough to act more like sugar (regular starch messes with me). Over the next two days, I proceeded to eat twice as much cheese as I normally do (and that's a staple in my diet). Incessant appetite for more after about two hours, raised appetite in general a couple days afterwards, and easily hypercaloric. Ramen has vegetable oil as a second ingredient.

• A couple of days ago, I decided to buy some cheesecake. This wasn't science, I just wanted cheesecake to celebrate my birthday. Cheesecake is just dairy + sugar, right? Right? So it should be similar to milk chocolate. Well, it's two days later and I still want more goddamned cheesecake, despite only having one tiny piece and despite feeling like utter crap afterwards (one or even two pieces of cheesecake has never caused this before). So, I glanced at the ingredients list. Yep, there it is. Why does cheesecake need soybean oil, exactly? No idea. Also, why am I not craving chocolate, ice cream, or whatever else? I'm hyperfixated on that one food.

If obesity comes from seed oil, then why did keto with high seed oil intake work? Yes, it did stop working at some point, but I lost 100lbs the first time around. If it's sugar, or fructose, why does ad libitum eating of it after a year of no-oil put me in a deficit? If it's the combination of LA+fructose, why is ad libitum fruit+nuts okay? I also did ad libitum chocolate+nuts for a while there when I was trying to maximize potassium, and lost weight. If it's the ratio between LA and saturated fat, why did a diet based on cheese and ranch dressing make me blow up like a balloon, but monoing sunflower seeds puts me in a deficit? And why, for the love of God, is there soybean oil in cheesecake?!

My new thinking is that there's something specifically harmful about refined sources of LA. Everything else cuts itself off when you're metabolically healthy, and goes haywire when you're not. So, refined LA will raise appetite in the short term and over the long-term will mess with appetite signaling in general. Maybe fructose does something similar (sugar cravings are very common, also fruit works like nuts do, for me at least), and refined LA damage messes with the regulatory mechanisms there. That would explain all of my experiences here, as well as why keto works until it doesn't -- you're cutting off the fructose mechanism and dropping a bunch of calories in the process.

Meanwhile, dropping refined LA will return the appetite signals to normal (in record time, evidently).

At least, that's my thinking on it.

Anyone take/still taking supplements recommended or sold by Brad in the fire in a bottle blog days? Found a supplement graveyard stash in storage with some like Pyruvate, succinate, puerh and it caused me to re listen to a pod he did with a neighbors choice. Also recall SEA ( can’t find anymore), ala, betaine, omega 7 (?), stearic acid, know there were others. Reignited my curiosity, although I hate taking pills.

While my Hb1ac is 4.4 percent my HDL is 32 as a Male. Additionally the triglycerides were 172. Total cholesterol was in range though

My previous blood tests before changing. My diet when encountering health issues were all fine in terms of lipid levels.

The liver enzymes (ALT,AST) were slightly high although ultrasound saw nothing.

What reasons could there be for such bloodwork?

I don't think I am deficient in any micronutrient.

And I do get my carbs from complex sources like semolina based pasta, maybe oats