Given that over half your experiment was you adapting to the diet, I do wonder what would happen if you just stuck with the honey diet for another month or two?
yeah, but maybe it's worth picking one high carb thing to do for three months?
i don't know anything about adaptation to high carb diets, but if people judged carnivore based on what happens in the first month, almost nobody would keep doing it.
I know this sounds rather absurd, but did you experience more static shocks during the honey diet? Ever since I massively upped my sugar intake, I get shocked quite often when I touch (metal) things.
You know what... I think so, yes. I never made a diet connection, but I have been getting zapped when exiting my car a lot lately. Bizarre! What could it be?
Oh wow! As far as I know, we don't actually have much of an idea what's going on with static electricity, maybe physics results can come from nutrition studies after all.
I've been backreading your blog and enjoying it a lot! (I'm a mid-30s woman with a BMI of 41 -- I'd like to change this, but the conventional things I've tried have just made things worse.)
A couple things I'm wondering about:
1. The conventional wisdom is that "yo-yo dieting" destroys your metabolism and makes you way fatter in the long run. Do you think there's any truth to that? Do your different month-long experiments count as yo-yo-ing?
2. I'm interested in trying a diet based on your research. My concern is, if I can't stick to it for more than a year, will I have made myself worse off in the long run? Context: my weight is generally very stable, but a couple years ago I did a typical calorie-counting diet for 6 months. I lost 30 pounds... and then gained back 60, which have stuck around every since. The status quo seems better than going through that kind of dip-then-peak again.
Anyway, thank you for your research! You're inspiring.
I think what destroys your metabolism is not the "yo-yo" shape, it's starving yourself down.
In short, your body can only access so much body fat per day. If you're overweight, almost by definition that's somehow inhibited, or you wouldn't have become overweight.
Say your body can only get at 800kcal/day.
So when you try to drastically get into a deficit of e.g. 1,500kcal/day, only 800 of those are going to be made up by body fat - by definition, cause you can't get to more than that.
The rest your body will either have to get from burning lean mass like muscle, or by saving on expenditure. This can result in infamous symptoms like feeling cold all the time, reduced immune function (=getting sick), lethargy, inability to concentrate.. basically, your body running on low-energy mode to survive.
When you then go back up to a "normal" amount of energy, your body will go back into full power mode and you might gain more than you starved off to begin with.
This is all obviously bad and I'd avoid it if possible.
Since I (almost) never intentionally restrict calories, I don't think my experiments have this effect. I mostly switch between different ways of eating ad-libitum to satiety.
I have confirmed this various ways by measuring my metabolic rate, e.g. via RMR (resting metabolic rate) and DLW (doubly-labeled water). My metabolic rate is right where it's supposed to be.
Sounds like you've experienced exactly the phenomenon I've described above.
Since my diets are all ad-libitum energy, I wouldn't expect this to happen to you. That said, when I go back on high protein diets I gain fat very rapidly still, just like I did before. So it's not the case either that you can just do one of these diets for 6 months and then go back to normal eating w/o regaining weight.
If you want to try a diet, I'd pick either high-carb/low-fat (potato/rice diet) or low-fat/high-carb (cream diet). Depending on which one sounds better to you haha.
Try to stick to 80%+ of that macro (carbs or fat), and 10% or less protein.
> when I go back on high protein diets I gain fat very rapidly still
Have you checked this recently? Sounds like your non-24 is good and gone. Actually fixed rather than 'in remission'. It would be interesting if protein/swamp adventures brought it or the hyperphagia back, wouldn't it?
My guess is that the anabology diet is a little too lenient on fat intake, in a way that deviates from some of the older low-fat stuff. It might be better for more lean people, but if you have 50+ lbs to lose probably needs more conscious restriction to work. For comparison when I first started methods like these 6 months ago I was eating candy or fruit only until evening, and then a "large" dinner which was a big bowl of white rice, lean beef or chicken breast, optional veg and unlimited sauces. The only fat in the diet was the trace fats in trimmed top round steak. That worked pretty well for me, and my weight loss stopped when I started reading more on the subreddit and fucking around with Brad's stearic acid and making bread and stuff.
Again, didn't regain, but it did stop. I've still only lost maybe 5 lbs eating fruit and starch. I don't know how to cut starch. I've been stuffing my face with apples carrots mangos peaches pears, and pickles for salt but I get some hunger-related headache in the evening and get insane starch cravings. Rice or air popcorn helps, but they're slowing the weight loss I think.
Maybe I need to go back on the lean beef and rice.
Could be for sure. Although I had hoped that the timing aspect would allow this to be a higher fat diet than if you were mixing e.g. every meal.
Sounds like you should try going back on lean beef & rice haha :)
Last 2 days (after honey diet ended) I did a refeed and finally ate some butter croissants heh. I did get mad satiety but man, I was eating like 5k carolies a day. No way I'd lose weight on that.
My friend, I really enjoy your effort you put into losing weight. While you and I may not agree to everything, I appreciate the commitment you put in.
--
Hunger feelings. Years ago, when I was eating omnivore, I ate one meal a day at noon. I am a night owl. Around 4 pm I got "hunger growls" so I decided to simply observe these. These would peak at 5 pm, then go away completely by 8pm. The 'hunger pains' were psychosomatic; a signal I thought was a distress signal requiring eating to remove, when time took care of that as well.
--
Estrogen. I now believe my weight gain and retention is due to xenoestrogens. https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/detoxing-estrogen-excess-in-men-and . Fat gained easily, and hard to take off. You are testing your linoic acid theory, which is awesome. I will now add in moringa leaves and broccoli seed sprouts in the coming months. You may want to add these as well.
--
I look forward to your next update on another month on HCLishF experiment.
Thank you for sharing and for encouraging others to do our own tests. I listened to your suggestion of upping carbs and reducing protein... gained 5lbs and a love for potatoes, LOL. I am keeping fat intake to 5-10% of my macros, mostly from fish sources. I have to say satiety is better for me with high protein than starches in terms of fullness levels 2-3 hours post eating. As long as I fit into my current wardrobe, a low fat carbo or low fat protein both seem to work allright. Not sold on your PUFA is the main villain argument, I just avoid anything "made by a man in a factory downtown"... (you need to be old to get that reference, ha).
This might be an odd question or something you've answered already, but how do you get the color coded areas and the vertical bars describing the diet change onto your graph? I am assuming you are using excel but I can't figure it out. I've been running experiments myself and currently I have each diet experiment on a separate spreadsheet tab but I'd like to join them together for a better picture and I really enjoy how your graphs read visually.
Thanks! Interested to learn about the honey diet. I’ve been using lo-carb and keto to keep pre-diabetes in remission for 15 years. Thinking about whether i can incorporate this idea of consuming carbs and then fat/protein at separate times. My first phase insulin response is lousy, so likely would have to try small amounts of carbs, at least at first.
The 1st phase response should come back in 2-3 days of eating high carbs, or probably a bit longer if you start small.
My first day of high sugar I went over 200mg/dL. But soon it was never even 150, usually in the 140s after a meal. Quickly back down <100 within an hour.
I've been enjoying following your blog over the past few months. Thanks for the excellent content! Can you please explain the preference for sugar over starch in this experiment? Seems like starch would be preferable to at least slightly blunt the blood glucose spikes. Is it the protein content of high starch foods like rice and potatoes that you are trying to avoid?
I think he thinks along the lines of Ray Peat here: starches take longer to digest and have more protein (8-10% instead of fruit's nearly 0%).
Since the goal is to get blood glucose back to baseline in the afternoon fasting period, starches could take too long. I've seen this myself, when I was doing the rice diet a couple months ago my glucose was over 100 all day long.
In the fruit portion of the honey diet, it was usually back down within only 1h.
In a sense, the glucose spikes are a point: he wants the glucose to go up & down rapidly, instead of it taking longer.
Very nice post. I'd also want to thank you for doing these experiments. I think you are experimenting in one of the most interesting and not-well understood areas of diets, which is how to maximize our health with clever partitioning of macro-nurients.
Some thoughts:
1. The evidence that both diets, high-fat AND high-carb, are beneficial, is a very interesting one, and I think it encodes important information on our evolutionary development. As such, it might mean that physiological energy is maximized according to one "extreme", whereas swapping is less beneficial. Indeed, in an evolutionary POV, the environment was mostly emphasizing certain nutrients, and probably not the others. I think that the Honey diet is allowing you to "taste" from both worlds, and to enjoy them, given that you are metabolicaly well. Your ~2 weeks adjustment in both rive and honey diet may suggest that phase of adjustment.
2. dental health: I used to have severe inflammatory issues in my teeth, and during that time I was diagnosed with Crohn's. That was some 4 years ago, when I drastically changed my lifestyle and diet regime. Today, I east lots of fruits and honey, while I rarely brush my teeth (started with that around 1.5 yrs ago) - my teeth are in great condition. I believe that teeth are destroyed from inner inflammatory conditions, rather than from being in a sugary environment.
I agree with both 1 and 2. I've always had good teeth, but my gums were always inflamed as heck. Dentist would always tell me to "brush more" - but that just caused bleeding.
6-12 months into avoiding PUFAs, I went to the dentist and almost no bleeding. My teeth were way less sensitive, too! He congratulated me on my flossing - but of course I hadn't flossed any more.
Since then, my gums have gotten better with every visit.
When you say you were "bloated" does that include being gassy? Honey diet made me ridiculously gassy to the point where I stopped it after 7 days because it just wasn't worth it. Maybe it's the foods I was eating (lots of tangerines and OJ).
Yea, I was definitely more gassy than normal, although it wasn't terrible. It got a lot better as I did the diet longer, after that 2.5 week point it was almost gone.
Could be that I reduced my OJ/fruit consumption and had more energy drinks instead, too? Less fiber.
From what I understand, it's not just about fiber. Fructose is more difficult for the body to absorb than glucose, and any unabsorbed fructose will get fermented by bacteria in the colon, causing gas.
Over time the body can adapt by: (1) varying the bacterial composition of the colon to more efficiently ferment the excess fructose (thus reducing gas); or (2) upregulating the transport proteins in the small intestine that absorb the fructose. And apparently these compensatory processes could take weeks or months.
I see. I think I've heard some Peaters talk about the fructose/glucose ratios in some fruits for that. Maybe oranges are particularly bad? I'll say for me it wasn't that bad, just sort of what I remembered from eating SAD: multiple farts a day, lol.
Do you have any details or guesses about why l-carnitine is bad with this diet? Im gonna give it a go, but I’ve been taking 2 g l carnitine for androgen receptor optimization
I bet the hunger pangs were protein deficiency starting to make itself known, there has to be a lower limit somewhere. Tooth-wise you don't need to worry too much about honey or fruit or even HFCS I think, except to the extent that they'll have a bit of sucrose in them. It's sucrose specifically that causes the trouble.
Fascinating. If you've found a way to get rid of stored LA quickly I'll probably have a go at some point. I really want that stuff gone, and I love fruit and honey.
Given that over half your experiment was you adapting to the diet, I do wonder what would happen if you just stuck with the honey diet for another month or two?
That is of course always a question, with the rice diet as well. But I can't try everything for 3 months, there isn't enough time as it is :'-(
yeah, but maybe it's worth picking one high carb thing to do for three months?
i don't know anything about adaptation to high carb diets, but if people judged carnivore based on what happens in the first month, almost nobody would keep doing it.
Ha could be, but for me keto was life changing within days ;) Carnivore I never fully liked/got used to even in 3 months..
I get what you're saying though.
I suspect you're well past the "newbie gains" stage ... :-)
Thanks for doing and sharing your experiments with us, very appreciated. Truly a faustian character.
lol are you suggesting I make a bargain with the devil? :D
I'd warn against this, he's known to stick to his bargains, but there are examples of people regretting their trades in later life.
Not all roses then, is it
More of a pursuit of knowledge kind of analogy. But who knows, maybe you need some extra funding for all those tests.
Haha sometimes I feel like I already have ;)
Medicine, and Law, and Philosophy -
You've worked your way through every school,
Even, God help you, Theology,
And sweated at it like a fool.
Why labour at it any more?
You're no wiser now than you were before.
I know this sounds rather absurd, but did you experience more static shocks during the honey diet? Ever since I massively upped my sugar intake, I get shocked quite often when I touch (metal) things.
You know what... I think so, yes. I never made a diet connection, but I have been getting zapped when exiting my car a lot lately. Bizarre! What could it be?
Oh wow! As far as I know, we don't actually have much of an idea what's going on with static electricity, maybe physics results can come from nutrition studies after all.
woah ... ?!!
I've been backreading your blog and enjoying it a lot! (I'm a mid-30s woman with a BMI of 41 -- I'd like to change this, but the conventional things I've tried have just made things worse.)
A couple things I'm wondering about:
1. The conventional wisdom is that "yo-yo dieting" destroys your metabolism and makes you way fatter in the long run. Do you think there's any truth to that? Do your different month-long experiments count as yo-yo-ing?
2. I'm interested in trying a diet based on your research. My concern is, if I can't stick to it for more than a year, will I have made myself worse off in the long run? Context: my weight is generally very stable, but a couple years ago I did a typical calorie-counting diet for 6 months. I lost 30 pounds... and then gained back 60, which have stuck around every since. The status quo seems better than going through that kind of dip-then-peak again.
Anyway, thank you for your research! You're inspiring.
I think what destroys your metabolism is not the "yo-yo" shape, it's starving yourself down.
In short, your body can only access so much body fat per day. If you're overweight, almost by definition that's somehow inhibited, or you wouldn't have become overweight.
Say your body can only get at 800kcal/day.
So when you try to drastically get into a deficit of e.g. 1,500kcal/day, only 800 of those are going to be made up by body fat - by definition, cause you can't get to more than that.
The rest your body will either have to get from burning lean mass like muscle, or by saving on expenditure. This can result in infamous symptoms like feeling cold all the time, reduced immune function (=getting sick), lethargy, inability to concentrate.. basically, your body running on low-energy mode to survive.
When you then go back up to a "normal" amount of energy, your body will go back into full power mode and you might gain more than you starved off to begin with.
This is all obviously bad and I'd avoid it if possible.
Since I (almost) never intentionally restrict calories, I don't think my experiments have this effect. I mostly switch between different ways of eating ad-libitum to satiety.
I have confirmed this various ways by measuring my metabolic rate, e.g. via RMR (resting metabolic rate) and DLW (doubly-labeled water). My metabolic rate is right where it's supposed to be.
Sounds like you've experienced exactly the phenomenon I've described above.
Since my diets are all ad-libitum energy, I wouldn't expect this to happen to you. That said, when I go back on high protein diets I gain fat very rapidly still, just like I did before. So it's not the case either that you can just do one of these diets for 6 months and then go back to normal eating w/o regaining weight.
If you want to try a diet, I'd pick either high-carb/low-fat (potato/rice diet) or low-fat/high-carb (cream diet). Depending on which one sounds better to you haha.
Try to stick to 80%+ of that macro (carbs or fat), and 10% or less protein.
E.g. here is a description of what I eat on ex150: https://www.exfatloss.com/p/ex150-diet-macros-2294kcal-88-fat
> when I go back on high protein diets I gain fat very rapidly still
Have you checked this recently? Sounds like your non-24 is good and gone. Actually fixed rather than 'in remission'. It would be interesting if protein/swamp adventures brought it or the hyperphagia back, wouldn't it?
The hyperphagia was def still there. Would I gain 20lbs if I kept doing the high protein for a month or two? I haven't tested that.
My guess is that the anabology diet is a little too lenient on fat intake, in a way that deviates from some of the older low-fat stuff. It might be better for more lean people, but if you have 50+ lbs to lose probably needs more conscious restriction to work. For comparison when I first started methods like these 6 months ago I was eating candy or fruit only until evening, and then a "large" dinner which was a big bowl of white rice, lean beef or chicken breast, optional veg and unlimited sauces. The only fat in the diet was the trace fats in trimmed top round steak. That worked pretty well for me, and my weight loss stopped when I started reading more on the subreddit and fucking around with Brad's stearic acid and making bread and stuff.
Again, didn't regain, but it did stop. I've still only lost maybe 5 lbs eating fruit and starch. I don't know how to cut starch. I've been stuffing my face with apples carrots mangos peaches pears, and pickles for salt but I get some hunger-related headache in the evening and get insane starch cravings. Rice or air popcorn helps, but they're slowing the weight loss I think.
Maybe I need to go back on the lean beef and rice.
Could be for sure. Although I had hoped that the timing aspect would allow this to be a higher fat diet than if you were mixing e.g. every meal.
Sounds like you should try going back on lean beef & rice haha :)
Last 2 days (after honey diet ended) I did a refeed and finally ate some butter croissants heh. I did get mad satiety but man, I was eating like 5k carolies a day. No way I'd lose weight on that.
My friend, I really enjoy your effort you put into losing weight. While you and I may not agree to everything, I appreciate the commitment you put in.
--
Hunger feelings. Years ago, when I was eating omnivore, I ate one meal a day at noon. I am a night owl. Around 4 pm I got "hunger growls" so I decided to simply observe these. These would peak at 5 pm, then go away completely by 8pm. The 'hunger pains' were psychosomatic; a signal I thought was a distress signal requiring eating to remove, when time took care of that as well.
--
Estrogen. I now believe my weight gain and retention is due to xenoestrogens. https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/detoxing-estrogen-excess-in-men-and . Fat gained easily, and hard to take off. You are testing your linoic acid theory, which is awesome. I will now add in moringa leaves and broccoli seed sprouts in the coming months. You may want to add these as well.
--
I look forward to your next update on another month on HCLishF experiment.
My experience with "hunger growls" is the same - they do go away. Typically takes 1-2h for me.
Thank you for sharing and for encouraging others to do our own tests. I listened to your suggestion of upping carbs and reducing protein... gained 5lbs and a love for potatoes, LOL. I am keeping fat intake to 5-10% of my macros, mostly from fish sources. I have to say satiety is better for me with high protein than starches in terms of fullness levels 2-3 hours post eating. As long as I fit into my current wardrobe, a low fat carbo or low fat protein both seem to work allright. Not sold on your PUFA is the main villain argument, I just avoid anything "made by a man in a factory downtown"... (you need to be old to get that reference, ha).
Looking forward to your next experiment!
Haha guess I'm not old enough, where's it from? If protein works for you, good. Might be a genetic thing.
This might be an odd question or something you've answered already, but how do you get the color coded areas and the vertical bars describing the diet change onto your graph? I am assuming you are using excel but I can't figure it out. I've been running experiments myself and currently I have each diet experiment on a separate spreadsheet tab but I'd like to join them together for a better picture and I really enjoy how your graphs read visually.
I am using a programming library called VegaLite that lets you make graphs. It has all sorts of stuff built in.
edit: I wrote about it here: https://www.exfatloss.com/p/losing-weight-with-unix-how-i-track
Thanks! Interested to learn about the honey diet. I’ve been using lo-carb and keto to keep pre-diabetes in remission for 15 years. Thinking about whether i can incorporate this idea of consuming carbs and then fat/protein at separate times. My first phase insulin response is lousy, so likely would have to try small amounts of carbs, at least at first.
The 1st phase response should come back in 2-3 days of eating high carbs, or probably a bit longer if you start small.
My first day of high sugar I went over 200mg/dL. But soon it was never even 150, usually in the 140s after a meal. Quickly back down <100 within an hour.
I've been enjoying following your blog over the past few months. Thanks for the excellent content! Can you please explain the preference for sugar over starch in this experiment? Seems like starch would be preferable to at least slightly blunt the blood glucose spikes. Is it the protein content of high starch foods like rice and potatoes that you are trying to avoid?
I just copied Anabology's protocol here: https://longestlevers.com/fat-loss/honey-diet.html
I think he thinks along the lines of Ray Peat here: starches take longer to digest and have more protein (8-10% instead of fruit's nearly 0%).
Since the goal is to get blood glucose back to baseline in the afternoon fasting period, starches could take too long. I've seen this myself, when I was doing the rice diet a couple months ago my glucose was over 100 all day long.
In the fruit portion of the honey diet, it was usually back down within only 1h.
In a sense, the glucose spikes are a point: he wants the glucose to go up & down rapidly, instead of it taking longer.
This sounds like the carb cycling diet compressed into one day....?
Yea, something like that
Very nice post. I'd also want to thank you for doing these experiments. I think you are experimenting in one of the most interesting and not-well understood areas of diets, which is how to maximize our health with clever partitioning of macro-nurients.
Some thoughts:
1. The evidence that both diets, high-fat AND high-carb, are beneficial, is a very interesting one, and I think it encodes important information on our evolutionary development. As such, it might mean that physiological energy is maximized according to one "extreme", whereas swapping is less beneficial. Indeed, in an evolutionary POV, the environment was mostly emphasizing certain nutrients, and probably not the others. I think that the Honey diet is allowing you to "taste" from both worlds, and to enjoy them, given that you are metabolicaly well. Your ~2 weeks adjustment in both rive and honey diet may suggest that phase of adjustment.
2. dental health: I used to have severe inflammatory issues in my teeth, and during that time I was diagnosed with Crohn's. That was some 4 years ago, when I drastically changed my lifestyle and diet regime. Today, I east lots of fruits and honey, while I rarely brush my teeth (started with that around 1.5 yrs ago) - my teeth are in great condition. I believe that teeth are destroyed from inner inflammatory conditions, rather than from being in a sugary environment.
I agree with both 1 and 2. I've always had good teeth, but my gums were always inflamed as heck. Dentist would always tell me to "brush more" - but that just caused bleeding.
6-12 months into avoiding PUFAs, I went to the dentist and almost no bleeding. My teeth were way less sensitive, too! He congratulated me on my flossing - but of course I hadn't flossed any more.
Since then, my gums have gotten better with every visit.
Your exploits are written so well that they always cheer me up.
Loved the description of making marshmallows.
I have become so paranoid about glucose that I wouldn't dare to try this diet but I thank you very much for doing so and explaining it so well.
Thanks :) After 9 years keto I was slightly sketched out about the sugar as well, but... I didn't even like it that much?
When you say you were "bloated" does that include being gassy? Honey diet made me ridiculously gassy to the point where I stopped it after 7 days because it just wasn't worth it. Maybe it's the foods I was eating (lots of tangerines and OJ).
Yea, I was definitely more gassy than normal, although it wasn't terrible. It got a lot better as I did the diet longer, after that 2.5 week point it was almost gone.
Could be that I reduced my OJ/fruit consumption and had more energy drinks instead, too? Less fiber.
From what I understand, it's not just about fiber. Fructose is more difficult for the body to absorb than glucose, and any unabsorbed fructose will get fermented by bacteria in the colon, causing gas.
Over time the body can adapt by: (1) varying the bacterial composition of the colon to more efficiently ferment the excess fructose (thus reducing gas); or (2) upregulating the transport proteins in the small intestine that absorb the fructose. And apparently these compensatory processes could take weeks or months.
I see. I think I've heard some Peaters talk about the fructose/glucose ratios in some fruits for that. Maybe oranges are particularly bad? I'll say for me it wasn't that bad, just sort of what I remembered from eating SAD: multiple farts a day, lol.
Do you have any details or guesses about why l-carnitine is bad with this diet? Im gonna give it a go, but I’ve been taking 2 g l carnitine for androgen receptor optimization
I think just cause it's an amino acid?
Have you had residual sugar cravings?
After stopping the honey diet, you mean? No.
Yeah 👍
I bet the hunger pangs were protein deficiency starting to make itself known, there has to be a lower limit somewhere. Tooth-wise you don't need to worry too much about honey or fruit or even HFCS I think, except to the extent that they'll have a bit of sucrose in them. It's sucrose specifically that causes the trouble.
Fascinating. If you've found a way to get rid of stored LA quickly I'll probably have a go at some point. I really want that stuff gone, and I love fruit and honey.