I got foliculitis and skin infections that required dual antibiotics to solve from the Low A diet. its been 3 months of the foliculitis is in retreat but still there
I got insane teeth pain about 2 months in. this seems semi-common amongst low A dieters.
Coffee with either monk fruit or monk fruit and coconut milk
Egg whites
Banana
Lunch:
Parsnip salad (like the Peat carrot salad) with CNO and ACV
Coconut Yogurt, maybe a few berries.
Bone Broth and/or some left over meat from last night's dinner. shrimp, chicken, beef. Largely beef.
alternatively, it'd be the Grant Genereux special - a mix of rice, black or red or white beans, and some ground bison
Dinner:
Meat and a starch. Typically rice or skinned potatoes. meat was typically beef or skinless/boneless chicken. mostly beef.
Dessert (if any)
Would typically be a fruit bowl (carbs at night helps me sleep). Blueberries with a honey drizzle or something.
Snacks: sometimes macademia nuts, or peeled apples.
I started the diet at the tail end of August 2024
I started seeing little bumps on my thighs by end of September but thought nothing of it. I thought.. pimples or something. I work out a lot, sauna a lot, try to get 30 min of sun a day on most of my body... maybe i just need to clean better.
By October they started to get quite large and painful. For a while i thought i had some kind of fungal thing and tried treating it that way and it seemed to get a little better but not by much.
Then by November, I started to get little cuts on my fingers (yard work) and they'd become excessively sore and inflamed. Like they were getting infected. I'd have to keep antibiotic cream and bandaids on them.
In December i got one of these infections on a pulled hangnail, and one evening - with that same hand, i scratched my ear bc it itched. The skin on my ear got infected and i ended up with several lumps/masses, and became quite clear the cartiledge was infected.
By Dec 15th I went back to eating retinol. One of the bumps straight up turned into a boil and i just gave up. I had to be on both Cipro and Clindamycin - the cipro gave me neuropathy that took months to resolve with high dose Magnesium., to get the infection(s) under control.
I increased my Zinc to 15/mg a day, 2x a day and 1mg Copper every 2-3 days. I introduced niacinamide 100mg a day. Started using niacinamide cream on my legs, and a Salicylic Acid cream as well. For 2 months i had to keep my legs slathered in antibiotic ointments as well,
I had blood culture ran and nothing came back positive. never did a hole punch biopsy to figure out just what bacteria was crawling all over me.
By Feb it's mostly under control. I'm not getting infections or large sores but i'm back down to the pimples i was getting early on and it all seems in retreat.
The tooth sensitivity and pain kicked into high gear in November and took until January to settle down. It was a mix of prescription toothpaste for sensitive teeth and putting retinol back in my diet.
most people on twitter very vocal about LowA have complaints about how their teeth "kill them".
I figure it was one of the stupidest things I've ever done to myself. Trying to explain the problems i'm attempting to solve for... would take a post 10x the size of this.
Dear Lord! That sounds terrifying. Glad you're better now.
"Stuff not healing" seems to be an expected symptom of vA deficiency. I recently read a study on low-vA and low red blood cell (and other blood cells) count/inability to heal wounds was one of the biggest things they found besides vision issues (starting with bad night vision IIRC).
Hmm. I don't consider the Potato Diet high fiber, especially if the potatoes are peeled. These days, I have to add steamed cabbage on days when I potato hack to bump up the fiber.
It's also 8lbs of food lol. I think that's why the potato diet didn't work for me last time; not enough carolies. I was just starving, it was an inefficient fast.
The Potato Hack book recommends peeling due to solanine levels which in excess can cause intestinal discomfort. I peeled mine. If I had your issues and wanted to try again, I’d ease into it. Maybe a week of half a potato daily. I did this slow approach with legumes after years of avoidance.
Yes. Currently not wearing a CGM, but I poke myself often.
My very first heavy sugar meal (after 48h dry fast) I reached 249mg/dL, but after that, I never surpassed 170 ever again. I'm usually <100 and sometimes even <80mg/dL in the morning.
Compared to the rice diet, where my glucose was elevated to 100-120mg/dL all day, on the sugar diet, it spikes and then comes back down very rapidly. Within 1-2h I'm typically back to baseline.
Do you actually have glucose control issues, or are you just wondering if that'd pose an issue?
If the latter, I'd just try it. If the former, that could point to linoleic acid issues. But plenty of people on r/SaturatedFat have reversed their diabetes on a HCLF diet, so it should definitely be possible.
"reversed their diabetes" - with a high fat diet, they are not challenging their system with glucose, which is the method to test for diabetes. These people are using an artificial food protocol, that can not be replicated outside the advanced first world (electrical food refrigeration, local grocery stores stocking non-local foods, high selection of meat and fat). To reverse their diabetes, they would need to do a glucose challenge test (as you know), and observe their insulin/sugar spikes and time to return to baseline).
--
I contest that none of these people actually healed or improved their diabetes. They simply hacked their bodies systems.
--
What is our definition of health? I like cole's definition (youtube, snake diet) which is high energy while being ripped. He tried all the diets, and trains people in the gym. He has finally concluded that HCLFL/MP is the best. (language warning). DurianRider of youtube has been saying the same thing for many years.
I agree that keto people would have to pass an OGTT. Which is possible. You can absolutely reverse insulin resistance/"root cause diabetes" on keto, you "just" need to do it right.
I also disagree with the "artificial food protocol" thing. We evolved during a time when this was the norm; fatty mega fauna. Some of us seem supremely adapted to it, and the fact that we use electricity for it doesn't matter to me.
"High energy" is hard to measure objectively, and ripped is not particularly important for health, I think.
Not sure I have a great definition of health in general, but in terms of diabesity we could say "Should pass an OGTT and have <100 or even <90 fasting glucose and <20% body fat for me/<30% for women" I suppose.
I have also tried all the diets, and I've seen way, way less success cases on it than keto. It seems way more difficult and the space is fraught with vegan ideologues and assholes like Cole.
I believe that HCLF is probably a better intervention for depleting LA, but I suspect that (low-LA) is superior in the long run, at least for people with my genetics.
We didn't have much plant foods for millennia up North, and even now, without the "artificial food environment" you mention, we wouldn't have any for at least half the year.
I acknowledge you were speaking HCLF - I read /saturated fat and then stopped reading the next words ... my bad.
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My dad's kidney filtration rate flatlined (instead of going down in stage 5) in 5 days by stopping meat and dairy. All other factors stayed the same (sedentary, smoker, diabetes, overweight) thus I can say with certainty, that in those 5 days and the 4 years since (he does eat a tiny amount of meat a week and a teaspoon off milk in his one coffee in the morning) his filtration rate has increased (healing/repairing).
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Potatoes would be a far superior food choice for people in the north. Dig a root cellar and store the potatoes below the frost line. Relying on game for calories is not a good choice in the north (my grandfather was a line trapper in the far north). Starch is superior for storage, and reliable calories, in the far north compared to animal sourced protein and fat.
--
vegan idealogues ... is that a term to discredit an entire category of people, so that their arguments are thus not examined? Like the term "conspiracy theorists"? I am not at all being confrontational with you, I enjoy our honest search for being healthy and to lose weight. What if not eating animal sourced meat and fat is healthier in the long run? What if Dr. Esselstyn was correct in his two studies, which appears to prove that heart attacks and strokes are directly the result of food intake of animal meat, animal fat, seed oils (and even nuts due to the high fat intake)?
--
Winston Price. I know you did not bring him up. I am sharing this observation with you because you seem to be a lifetime curious learner. In the last number of years, my relationship with an asian woman brought me into direct contact with her farming family. They only got a single shared line of electricity in their home two years ago. They still use firewood, and they do not have running water. I like them, and their honest natures. How does this connect with Winston Price? This dentist did a long tour of asian villages, and came away with this sense that they ate a lot of meat, and as a result their teeth were straight. Well, I know know that these families raise chickens, goats, and cows, and caribou. The chickens are eaten on birthdays (six a year), the goats on special occasions (weddings, one a year), and the cows on the biggest occasion (she recalls only once in her life). She comes from a family with 4 kids. The dad had all his siblings living near with their kids (16 houses made of bamboo). Meat is eaten only on special occasions. When a special guest comes into the village, then the goat or cow was killed. Winston Price was a very special guest whom stayed a short time at each location, and then moved on to the next. Of course he ate meat. If he would have stayed for a month, he would have then been introduced to their mainly starch diet, with very limited meat. He did not know this, because he moved on. Regarding teeth. This is amazing. Her mother would use her fingers to manually direct the growth of the babies teeth each night. And this works! Her teeth are all straight. Invisiline uses this same concept, but at the later stages of growth. These farmers used the pressure guidance at the infant stage - very very smart. Winston Price observed that all these native farmers had good teeth, but incorrectly concluded these were from the high meat diet he observed. He was not at all sneaky or cherry picking data - he simply did not stay long enough, nor have a long relationship with a woman there to learn these details of what the moms did to their babies teeth.
I don't think Esselstyn is correct. There are no good studies showing meat/animal fat cause heart attacks or strokes, it's just the PUFAs - which are plant based.
Potatoes don't grow well when it's too cold, and they get mold easily. Animals you can just keep alive and milk/slaughter. Plus, I tried the potato diet, and I didn't lose any weight on it.
Despite having tried HCLF quite extensively, I've yet to see any benefit except potentially the faster LA depletion. I haven't lost weight on any of my attempts, and they are inferior to keto in most other ways (ease, cost, quality of life, digestion, subjective feeling, fat loss).
I've yet to read the Winston Price book, so I can't comment on that. Although from what I hear of his stuff, I am skeptical that his conclusions are correct, like you are.
I enjoy dialoguing with you. Everyone has their own biases, their own views which they then apply confirmation bias. I am now biased to plant based solely, and you are biased to keto. I am not saying you are ‘wrong’ and my thinking is ‘superior.’
One must be willing to throw out a long held cherished belief if one wants to get to greater truths. I have thrown out most of my previous beliefs regarding major tenants of ‘christianity,’ as well as my taught views of physics and space/time.
Regarding Esselstyn. I believe his study was well done, with the 36 participants whom dropped out were thus a perfect control group. How did the 164 fare compared to the control group of 36? How many events did the 164 have in the study period (and the 5 year follow up) verses the 36? What if he is right? That changing the food virtually eliminated cardiovascular events (there was only a single event in the 164, and this was in a period of cheating, as admitted to by that man). You said “I didn’t think Esselstyn is correct” - yet did you know these details I wrote about above? If you did not, then you discounted the study without actually reading it, showing confirmation bias. (admittedly I show my bias by intensely studying this study). Your next sentence shows the blinding effect. “There are NO good studies” … you used an absolute, which infers you yourself did an evaluation of ALL studies available, and threw out ALL studies based on design flaws or other good reasons. We both know you did not do that, since there are so many studies over the last 150 years, and many more produced daily.
Regarding keto. Is there ANY good long term studies (over 1 year) on large numbers (over 1000) of people doing complete keto? My criteria is not that demanding. The Eskimo, the Masai, are not well studied groups. The digging up of frozen Eskimo shows atherosclerosis even those in their late 30s and early 40s.
Regarding keto for you. Yes, you are correct, you know how you felt, and you know your performance. I ask, how much did you weigh before ketosis, and how much did you weigh after? You said fat loss was one of your benefits.
Do you acknowledge the n=1 (actually n=2) of my dad and his kidney function?
Potatoes and the north. In Canada, the western provinces grow very large amounts of pototoes, even though these are snow bound for 6 months a year, and the winter temperatures often are minus 20 ³C (-4F) and lower. I believe that counters your assertion that “potatoes don’t grow well when it’s too cold”.
Fat loss. We need to have a calorie deficit, in either plant based or keto based lifestyles. Neither results in fat loss if we are in a caloric excess.
The corn thing is wild! It kinda makes sense? With some caveats.
The average Mexican eats like 76kg of tortillas a year. THE staple food for native indigenous civilizations was corn. Even in their mythology the gods create humans from corn lol.
So eating corn or tortillas wouldn't appear to make you fat.
However! (the plot thickens)
Mexicans are in second place in global obesity and first in child obesity.
That would make sense in the light of eating tortillas every day plus eating tons of seed oils.
It kinda tracks. Sad to realize tortillas are trying to kill me :(
I've heard some suggest that the traditional method of preparing corn flour ("masa") was different and neutralized a lot of the linoleic acid. I believe it's called nixtamalization. If you check the wikipedia article on it, it says that some of the corn oil is broken down into emulsifiers.
As I understand it, being broken down into emulsifiers here just means that triglycerides (which are a glycerol backbone esterified with three fatty acids) is broken down into diglycerides (glycerol with two fatty acids) or monoglycerides (glycerol with one fatty acid) and the leftover fatty acids become free fatty acids. I'm not sure this process helps much with dealing with linoleic acid.
Yes but you said that you had to do the rice diet properly with fruit, next, and I was just pointing out that technically, you have already done it with fruit. S'all.
Exactly! That's why 0 fat makes a big difference in PUFA depletion imo.
In ex150 just from the heavy cream you'd consume like 1.75g of LA (0.25g per 100g).
And let's say the body can eliminate 3g a day. Only 1.25g would be removed daily vs 3g in a 0 fat diet. Almost triple the rate! This numbers are just an example of course.
But it seems when depleting we have to go near 0 intake. In vitamin A it was the same for Ggenereux. He ate 1 carrot after months of 0 vitA and he had a small flare up again.
Maybe that's the reason it so hard to cure obesity. There's almost no chance of stumbling into a 0 fat diet by accident.
Yea, I think you're onto something. On a high-fat diet, even if low-LA%, you're going to add just about as much LA per day as your body requires for the essential fatty acid (EFA) component. You might oxidize some, but given that you're also eating massive amounts of SFA/MUFA, only a small amount of your LA will, statistically, be oxidized for energy.
If you minimize total fat, and also LA%, you'll have so little (maybe 0) LA coming in that your body's entire daily requirement for EFA will be subtracted every day, because there is no new LA coming in.
I've seen 2g per 1,000kcal, so for an adult man, about 6g. It's not a lot of wiggle room, you're right.
There's probably a lot more wiggle room if you're ancestrally-unPUFA'd and eat a bunch of nuts or whatever seasonally. But most of us are massively PUFA'd and we need to go hyper low to deplete at a reasonable rate.. sad!
I've tried that before, and it was neither sustainable nor did I lose weight. I hated every second of it.
I also dislike the potato "hack" terminology and that guy in particular, his explanation of "why the potato hack works" made clear why it doesn't work for me ("it's just carolies bruh!").
The whole page just showed a pretty basic lack of understanding of obesity IMO.
Might as well! I believe Grant G has done lots of venison/bison, although he's also said in an interview that it doesn't matter per se, beef is fine - he just has access to really good, local game in Alberta.
How much lean meat have you been doing on the honey diet? Would probably be a good idea to keep it the same to control as many factors as possible so you can get a good comparison.
So I started out on 150g lean beef. Within a week that became weirdly unsustainable, I'd be starving during the day and no amount of honey/fruit would give me any satiety. I didn't even want to eat any of it!
I upped it to 225g (1/2lb) of fatty (80/20) beef instead, and increased my cooking fat back to my normal level (~40g) and it went away.
This roughly protein-equates it with ex150, or about 40-45g protein per day. The cream normally adds about 20g, and the fruit was closer to 0g than 20. So I think I actually got a little too low there. Studies seem to show most people are in nitrogen balance around 40g, but almost nobody is at 20g.
I’m running into similar issues on the honey diet. Starving yet disgusted from too much sugar. Definitely need to up the lean protein to help with satiety
If you do something like rice, beef, and beans, consider adzuki beans. They are essentially carbs and protein with almost no fat. Most other beans have quite a bit of omega 6. Very mild flavor.
Hm, they do have LA. But sounds like this is something requiring a blood draw and therefore a lab visit? Or am I misunderstanding? Lower price would obv be awesome.
Yes I would have to go get my blood drawn at a Quest diagnostic which I've don't before. With the 20% off code and blood draw it's $52, so less than half the cost. I know it's missing a more detailed layout of fatty acid but do you think that will really matter not having those?
At home is a bit more convenient, but $52 is a great deal. I recently paid $87 for OQCs with their coupon code when they had one.
I think the LA number would be the most important, but the others can be interesting too for stuff like DNL. Not sure if you could get that from this test.
It would be interesting to see if the LA number from this one matches up with the OQ, because I've seen other brands of tests that don't. They must use a slightly different methodology. That makes it harder to compare.
How well did your LA number on this match up with your OQC number?
Having tried most approaches on either end of the carb or fat spectrum I think you need to do two solid months of high carb, I’d suggest fruits and sugars all day and starch at night with some fructose still
Zero fat added anywhere and hold back on the protein…. You’d be pleasantly surprised I’m sure
I got foliculitis and skin infections that required dual antibiotics to solve from the Low A diet. its been 3 months of the foliculitis is in retreat but still there
I got insane teeth pain about 2 months in. this seems semi-common amongst low A dieters.
Oh my! What exactly did you eat, and how long until these symptoms started appearing?
delayed response.
My LowA diet went like so:
Supplements: Zinc 15mg/day. B1 intermittently. Magneisum. L-Theanine, Selenium, Molybdenum
Breakfast:
Coffee with either monk fruit or monk fruit and coconut milk
Egg whites
Banana
Lunch:
Parsnip salad (like the Peat carrot salad) with CNO and ACV
Coconut Yogurt, maybe a few berries.
Bone Broth and/or some left over meat from last night's dinner. shrimp, chicken, beef. Largely beef.
alternatively, it'd be the Grant Genereux special - a mix of rice, black or red or white beans, and some ground bison
Dinner:
Meat and a starch. Typically rice or skinned potatoes. meat was typically beef or skinless/boneless chicken. mostly beef.
Dessert (if any)
Would typically be a fruit bowl (carbs at night helps me sleep). Blueberries with a honey drizzle or something.
Snacks: sometimes macademia nuts, or peeled apples.
I started the diet at the tail end of August 2024
I started seeing little bumps on my thighs by end of September but thought nothing of it. I thought.. pimples or something. I work out a lot, sauna a lot, try to get 30 min of sun a day on most of my body... maybe i just need to clean better.
By October they started to get quite large and painful. For a while i thought i had some kind of fungal thing and tried treating it that way and it seemed to get a little better but not by much.
Then by November, I started to get little cuts on my fingers (yard work) and they'd become excessively sore and inflamed. Like they were getting infected. I'd have to keep antibiotic cream and bandaids on them.
In December i got one of these infections on a pulled hangnail, and one evening - with that same hand, i scratched my ear bc it itched. The skin on my ear got infected and i ended up with several lumps/masses, and became quite clear the cartiledge was infected.
By Dec 15th I went back to eating retinol. One of the bumps straight up turned into a boil and i just gave up. I had to be on both Cipro and Clindamycin - the cipro gave me neuropathy that took months to resolve with high dose Magnesium., to get the infection(s) under control.
I increased my Zinc to 15/mg a day, 2x a day and 1mg Copper every 2-3 days. I introduced niacinamide 100mg a day. Started using niacinamide cream on my legs, and a Salicylic Acid cream as well. For 2 months i had to keep my legs slathered in antibiotic ointments as well,
I had blood culture ran and nothing came back positive. never did a hole punch biopsy to figure out just what bacteria was crawling all over me.
By Feb it's mostly under control. I'm not getting infections or large sores but i'm back down to the pimples i was getting early on and it all seems in retreat.
The tooth sensitivity and pain kicked into high gear in November and took until January to settle down. It was a mix of prescription toothpaste for sensitive teeth and putting retinol back in my diet.
most people on twitter very vocal about LowA have complaints about how their teeth "kill them".
I figure it was one of the stupidest things I've ever done to myself. Trying to explain the problems i'm attempting to solve for... would take a post 10x the size of this.
Dear Lord! That sounds terrifying. Glad you're better now.
"Stuff not healing" seems to be an expected symptom of vA deficiency. I recently read a study on low-vA and low red blood cell (and other blood cells) count/inability to heal wounds was one of the biggest things they found besides vision issues (starting with bad night vision IIRC).
Hmm. I don't consider the Potato Diet high fiber, especially if the potatoes are peeled. These days, I have to add steamed cabbage on days when I potato hack to bump up the fiber.
I was doing w/ the skins on when I tried it.
3,000kcal of potatoes has 81g fiber:
https://foods.exfatloss.com/food/170026?grams=3896
It's also 8lbs of food lol. I think that's why the potato diet didn't work for me last time; not enough carolies. I was just starving, it was an inefficient fast.
The Potato Hack book recommends peeling due to solanine levels which in excess can cause intestinal discomfort. I peeled mine. If I had your issues and wanted to try again, I’d ease into it. Maybe a week of half a potato daily. I did this slow approach with legumes after years of avoidance.
Do you track your blood sugar levels during your high carb trials? I'm concerned about both clearing Linoleic and insulin resistance/T2.
What are your current thoughts on a diet to clear Linoleic and control blood sugar levels.
I've already lost all the weight I need to via LCHF. If anything I want to add muscle mass and do assure sufficient protein.
Yes. Currently not wearing a CGM, but I poke myself often.
My very first heavy sugar meal (after 48h dry fast) I reached 249mg/dL, but after that, I never surpassed 170 ever again. I'm usually <100 and sometimes even <80mg/dL in the morning.
Compared to the rice diet, where my glucose was elevated to 100-120mg/dL all day, on the sugar diet, it spikes and then comes back down very rapidly. Within 1-2h I'm typically back to baseline.
Do you actually have glucose control issues, or are you just wondering if that'd pose an issue?
If the latter, I'd just try it. If the former, that could point to linoleic acid issues. But plenty of people on r/SaturatedFat have reversed their diabetes on a HCLF diet, so it should definitely be possible.
"reversed their diabetes" - with a high fat diet, they are not challenging their system with glucose, which is the method to test for diabetes. These people are using an artificial food protocol, that can not be replicated outside the advanced first world (electrical food refrigeration, local grocery stores stocking non-local foods, high selection of meat and fat). To reverse their diabetes, they would need to do a glucose challenge test (as you know), and observe their insulin/sugar spikes and time to return to baseline).
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I contest that none of these people actually healed or improved their diabetes. They simply hacked their bodies systems.
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What is our definition of health? I like cole's definition (youtube, snake diet) which is high energy while being ripped. He tried all the diets, and trains people in the gym. He has finally concluded that HCLFL/MP is the best. (language warning). DurianRider of youtube has been saying the same thing for many years.
> reversed their diabetes on a HCLF diet
I wasn't talking about high-fat.
I agree that keto people would have to pass an OGTT. Which is possible. You can absolutely reverse insulin resistance/"root cause diabetes" on keto, you "just" need to do it right.
I also disagree with the "artificial food protocol" thing. We evolved during a time when this was the norm; fatty mega fauna. Some of us seem supremely adapted to it, and the fact that we use electricity for it doesn't matter to me.
"High energy" is hard to measure objectively, and ripped is not particularly important for health, I think.
Not sure I have a great definition of health in general, but in terms of diabesity we could say "Should pass an OGTT and have <100 or even <90 fasting glucose and <20% body fat for me/<30% for women" I suppose.
I have also tried all the diets, and I've seen way, way less success cases on it than keto. It seems way more difficult and the space is fraught with vegan ideologues and assholes like Cole.
I believe that HCLF is probably a better intervention for depleting LA, but I suspect that (low-LA) is superior in the long run, at least for people with my genetics.
We didn't have much plant foods for millennia up North, and even now, without the "artificial food environment" you mention, we wouldn't have any for at least half the year.
I acknowledge you were speaking HCLF - I read /saturated fat and then stopped reading the next words ... my bad.
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My dad's kidney filtration rate flatlined (instead of going down in stage 5) in 5 days by stopping meat and dairy. All other factors stayed the same (sedentary, smoker, diabetes, overweight) thus I can say with certainty, that in those 5 days and the 4 years since (he does eat a tiny amount of meat a week and a teaspoon off milk in his one coffee in the morning) his filtration rate has increased (healing/repairing).
--
Potatoes would be a far superior food choice for people in the north. Dig a root cellar and store the potatoes below the frost line. Relying on game for calories is not a good choice in the north (my grandfather was a line trapper in the far north). Starch is superior for storage, and reliable calories, in the far north compared to animal sourced protein and fat.
--
vegan idealogues ... is that a term to discredit an entire category of people, so that their arguments are thus not examined? Like the term "conspiracy theorists"? I am not at all being confrontational with you, I enjoy our honest search for being healthy and to lose weight. What if not eating animal sourced meat and fat is healthier in the long run? What if Dr. Esselstyn was correct in his two studies, which appears to prove that heart attacks and strokes are directly the result of food intake of animal meat, animal fat, seed oils (and even nuts due to the high fat intake)?
--
Winston Price. I know you did not bring him up. I am sharing this observation with you because you seem to be a lifetime curious learner. In the last number of years, my relationship with an asian woman brought me into direct contact with her farming family. They only got a single shared line of electricity in their home two years ago. They still use firewood, and they do not have running water. I like them, and their honest natures. How does this connect with Winston Price? This dentist did a long tour of asian villages, and came away with this sense that they ate a lot of meat, and as a result their teeth were straight. Well, I know know that these families raise chickens, goats, and cows, and caribou. The chickens are eaten on birthdays (six a year), the goats on special occasions (weddings, one a year), and the cows on the biggest occasion (she recalls only once in her life). She comes from a family with 4 kids. The dad had all his siblings living near with their kids (16 houses made of bamboo). Meat is eaten only on special occasions. When a special guest comes into the village, then the goat or cow was killed. Winston Price was a very special guest whom stayed a short time at each location, and then moved on to the next. Of course he ate meat. If he would have stayed for a month, he would have then been introduced to their mainly starch diet, with very limited meat. He did not know this, because he moved on. Regarding teeth. This is amazing. Her mother would use her fingers to manually direct the growth of the babies teeth each night. And this works! Her teeth are all straight. Invisiline uses this same concept, but at the later stages of growth. These farmers used the pressure guidance at the infant stage - very very smart. Winston Price observed that all these native farmers had good teeth, but incorrectly concluded these were from the high meat diet he observed. He was not at all sneaky or cherry picking data - he simply did not stay long enough, nor have a long relationship with a woman there to learn these details of what the moms did to their babies teeth.
I don't think Esselstyn is correct. There are no good studies showing meat/animal fat cause heart attacks or strokes, it's just the PUFAs - which are plant based.
Potatoes don't grow well when it's too cold, and they get mold easily. Animals you can just keep alive and milk/slaughter. Plus, I tried the potato diet, and I didn't lose any weight on it.
Despite having tried HCLF quite extensively, I've yet to see any benefit except potentially the faster LA depletion. I haven't lost weight on any of my attempts, and they are inferior to keto in most other ways (ease, cost, quality of life, digestion, subjective feeling, fat loss).
I've yet to read the Winston Price book, so I can't comment on that. Although from what I hear of his stuff, I am skeptical that his conclusions are correct, like you are.
I enjoy dialoguing with you. Everyone has their own biases, their own views which they then apply confirmation bias. I am now biased to plant based solely, and you are biased to keto. I am not saying you are ‘wrong’ and my thinking is ‘superior.’
One must be willing to throw out a long held cherished belief if one wants to get to greater truths. I have thrown out most of my previous beliefs regarding major tenants of ‘christianity,’ as well as my taught views of physics and space/time.
Regarding Esselstyn. I believe his study was well done, with the 36 participants whom dropped out were thus a perfect control group. How did the 164 fare compared to the control group of 36? How many events did the 164 have in the study period (and the 5 year follow up) verses the 36? What if he is right? That changing the food virtually eliminated cardiovascular events (there was only a single event in the 164, and this was in a period of cheating, as admitted to by that man). You said “I didn’t think Esselstyn is correct” - yet did you know these details I wrote about above? If you did not, then you discounted the study without actually reading it, showing confirmation bias. (admittedly I show my bias by intensely studying this study). Your next sentence shows the blinding effect. “There are NO good studies” … you used an absolute, which infers you yourself did an evaluation of ALL studies available, and threw out ALL studies based on design flaws or other good reasons. We both know you did not do that, since there are so many studies over the last 150 years, and many more produced daily.
Regarding keto. Is there ANY good long term studies (over 1 year) on large numbers (over 1000) of people doing complete keto? My criteria is not that demanding. The Eskimo, the Masai, are not well studied groups. The digging up of frozen Eskimo shows atherosclerosis even those in their late 30s and early 40s.
Regarding keto for you. Yes, you are correct, you know how you felt, and you know your performance. I ask, how much did you weigh before ketosis, and how much did you weigh after? You said fat loss was one of your benefits.
Do you acknowledge the n=1 (actually n=2) of my dad and his kidney function?
Potatoes and the north. In Canada, the western provinces grow very large amounts of pototoes, even though these are snow bound for 6 months a year, and the winter temperatures often are minus 20 ³C (-4F) and lower. I believe that counters your assertion that “potatoes don’t grow well when it’s too cold”.
Fat loss. We need to have a calorie deficit, in either plant based or keto based lifestyles. Neither results in fat loss if we are in a caloric excess.
I also have this question
The corn thing is wild! It kinda makes sense? With some caveats.
The average Mexican eats like 76kg of tortillas a year. THE staple food for native indigenous civilizations was corn. Even in their mythology the gods create humans from corn lol.
So eating corn or tortillas wouldn't appear to make you fat.
However! (the plot thickens)
Mexicans are in second place in global obesity and first in child obesity.
That would make sense in the light of eating tortillas every day plus eating tons of seed oils.
It kinda tracks. Sad to realize tortillas are trying to kill me :(
I've heard some suggest that the traditional method of preparing corn flour ("masa") was different and neutralized a lot of the linoleic acid. I believe it's called nixtamalization. If you check the wikipedia article on it, it says that some of the corn oil is broken down into emulsifiers.
Didn't know that! Makes sense.
Maybe it's not that bad then. Researched an it seems that the LA in tortillas per 100g is just 1g more than beef.
Hm, I see 100g of tortillas as having way more LA (2g) than 100g of ground beef (80/20) at .4g. But it might depend on the brand?
I think one critique is that most modern corn meal is not made with this traditional method.
Personally I'm not touching corn for now. There are enough other flours out there without this risk.. rice, potatoes, even wheat.
As I understand it, being broken down into emulsifiers here just means that triglycerides (which are a glycerol backbone esterified with three fatty acids) is broken down into diglycerides (glycerol with two fatty acids) or monoglycerides (glycerol with one fatty acid) and the leftover fatty acids become free fatty acids. I'm not sure this process helps much with dealing with linoleic acid.
This paper nevertheless says that nixtamalization reduces linoleic acid significantly: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0733521018303114 But they seem unsure why this is.
Someone has probably already said, but you do know that tomatoes are a fruit?
Haha yea I guess. But they don't have that much sugar and they're savory and I like them with beef?
Yes but you said that you had to do the rice diet properly with fruit, next, and I was just pointing out that technically, you have already done it with fruit. S'all.
Ha, I guess so ;)
Exactly! That's why 0 fat makes a big difference in PUFA depletion imo.
In ex150 just from the heavy cream you'd consume like 1.75g of LA (0.25g per 100g).
And let's say the body can eliminate 3g a day. Only 1.25g would be removed daily vs 3g in a 0 fat diet. Almost triple the rate! This numbers are just an example of course.
But it seems when depleting we have to go near 0 intake. In vitamin A it was the same for Ggenereux. He ate 1 carrot after months of 0 vitA and he had a small flare up again.
Maybe that's the reason it so hard to cure obesity. There's almost no chance of stumbling into a 0 fat diet by accident.
Yea, I think you're onto something. On a high-fat diet, even if low-LA%, you're going to add just about as much LA per day as your body requires for the essential fatty acid (EFA) component. You might oxidize some, but given that you're also eating massive amounts of SFA/MUFA, only a small amount of your LA will, statistically, be oxidized for energy.
If you minimize total fat, and also LA%, you'll have so little (maybe 0) LA coming in that your body's entire daily requirement for EFA will be subtracted every day, because there is no new LA coming in.
At least that's my model, heh.
Exactly! Beautifully said
I think it might depend, I saw ranges of 1g of LA per 100g of tortillas. But yeah, not worth the risk.
If I remember correctly it was like 4g of PUFAs a day the maximum we ingested in "ancestral" diets? So that doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.
I've seen 2g per 1,000kcal, so for an adult man, about 6g. It's not a lot of wiggle room, you're right.
There's probably a lot more wiggle room if you're ancestrally-unPUFA'd and eat a bunch of nuts or whatever seasonally. But most of us are massively PUFA'd and we need to go hyper low to deplete at a reasonable rate.. sad!
I’d be interested to see you do the potato diet as written by Tim Steele on https://potatohack.com ie just boiled potato. Even just a 5 day hack.
Or Kempner as as practiced it - rice, fruit, fruit juice.
I've tried that before, and it was neither sustainable nor did I lose weight. I hated every second of it.
I also dislike the potato "hack" terminology and that guy in particular, his explanation of "why the potato hack works" made clear why it doesn't work for me ("it's just carolies bruh!").
The whole page just showed a pretty basic lack of understanding of obesity IMO.
Vitamin A diet for sure! Particularly low fat version
Thinking I'd do 1/2lb of very lean beef per day, should that do it? Rest ad-lib rice or rice noodles.
Add in some venison if you want super-lean?
Might as well! I believe Grant G has done lots of venison/bison, although he's also said in an interview that it doesn't matter per se, beef is fine - he just has access to really good, local game in Alberta.
A coworker of mine hooked me up with "half a side of deer" recently. It's been enjoyable.
How much lean meat have you been doing on the honey diet? Would probably be a good idea to keep it the same to control as many factors as possible so you can get a good comparison.
So I started out on 150g lean beef. Within a week that became weirdly unsustainable, I'd be starving during the day and no amount of honey/fruit would give me any satiety. I didn't even want to eat any of it!
I upped it to 225g (1/2lb) of fatty (80/20) beef instead, and increased my cooking fat back to my normal level (~40g) and it went away.
This roughly protein-equates it with ex150, or about 40-45g protein per day. The cream normally adds about 20g, and the fruit was closer to 0g than 20. So I think I actually got a little too low there. Studies seem to show most people are in nitrogen balance around 40g, but almost nobody is at 20g.
I’m running into similar issues on the honey diet. Starving yet disgusted from too much sugar. Definitely need to up the lean protein to help with satiety
I upped both protein + fat, will be interesting to see if just doing the protein helps for you. Since i don't know which part did it haha.
Seems like lean protein definitely helps with satiety more than pure sugar, but fat probably the most
If you do something like rice, beef, and beans, consider adzuki beans. They are essentially carbs and protein with almost no fat. Most other beans have quite a bit of omega 6. Very mild flavor.
Do you see any reason why this test from Ulta Lab Tests would not work for your analysis of linoleic acid levels?
It's half the price with an easy to find 20% off coupon.
https://www.ultalabtests.com/test/omega-3-and-6-fatty-acids
Hm, they do have LA. But sounds like this is something requiring a blood draw and therefore a lab visit? Or am I misunderstanding? Lower price would obv be awesome.
Yes I would have to go get my blood drawn at a Quest diagnostic which I've don't before. With the 20% off code and blood draw it's $52, so less than half the cost. I know it's missing a more detailed layout of fatty acid but do you think that will really matter not having those?
*which I've done before
At home is a bit more convenient, but $52 is a great deal. I recently paid $87 for OQCs with their coupon code when they had one.
I think the LA number would be the most important, but the others can be interesting too for stuff like DNL. Not sure if you could get that from this test.
It would be interesting to see if the LA number from this one matches up with the OQ, because I've seen other brands of tests that don't. They must use a slightly different methodology. That makes it harder to compare.
How well did your LA number on this match up with your OQC number?
Oh I meant I've don't blood tests before where I had to get drawn. I've never don't any blood tests for LA.
I bought both. Going to test Saturday.
Having tried most approaches on either end of the carb or fat spectrum I think you need to do two solid months of high carb, I’d suggest fruits and sugars all day and starch at night with some fructose still
Zero fat added anywhere and hold back on the protein…. You’d be pleasantly surprised I’m sure