If seed oils were invented in 1860, then your statement "Almost nobody restricted food intake 100 years ago [1925], and yet, somehow, almost nobody was obese." doesn't quite make sense. Seed oils had been around in increasing quantity for 65 years at that point. Crisco came onto the market in 1911. From their website: "In 1911, Crisco – the first-ever shortening made entirely of vegetable oil – was born. Clad in pristine white-paper overwrap, Crisco was seen as a more “pure” and economical alternative to animal fat and butter. Soon after our first print and radio ads debuted, products flew off of the shelves."
I do think seed oils play a part but the obesity epidemic wasn't really a thing until the 1970's. It seems more like a perfect storm including the usual suspects: pesticides, artificial colors and flavors, corn syrup, certain medical interventions, fat fear promulgated since the early 1960's and sun fear around the same time. I do think that getting seed oils out of one's diet is one of the most important first steps to take though- just doing that eliminates most of the other processed junk too.
You're right, my numbers were a bit vague. It's over 100 years at this point.
My understanding is that seed oils were used around 1900, but Crisco was the first "real, official" push where they weren't just adulterating existing fats like lard with it.
So the prevalence would've grown slowly over time, starting from almost 0 in 1860, to already a heart disease epidemic around 1900-1920, to crazy levels in 1950, even crazier in 1970, and still growing..
The obesity epidemic was actually already a thing in 1900. Compared to before. There's some interesting stuff about it in Knobbe's book, I think, and one of Tucker Goodrich's posts.
It just looks like 1970 was "the starting point" because on an exponential curve, there always seems to be "the point" but it's basically an optic illusion. If it continues for 50 more years, it'll look like 2010 is that point where it takes off.
That said, could very well be that all those other factors you mention play a huge part too. Safest thing (and almost only option when avoiding seed oils) is to cook everything yourself anyway, so might as well avoid as much other nonsense as possible.
There are several high-fat ancestral diets like Plains Indians a notable example, also all Arctic peoples, not just the Inuit, but also Saami and other Asian tundra Hunter-gatherers. But yeah, most of the extanct ketogenic diets are of pastoral peoples, since contemporary wild game is so lean. Pastoralism (and dairy) is one typical hack to get more animal fat.
(though an elephant at 10% body fat has still 400kg fat...) I am not sure about the !kung being high fat as well, they have a plant staple mongongo which is 80% fat.
I don't know, people were hardly interested in macros in the 70s when these kind of studies could have been conducted on traditional diets, but will try. Also, for example, African wildlife suffered a lot from colonial hunting in the 1800s, so studies from the 70s might not reflect diet composition from even a few hundred years ago.
I found a re-assessment of the !Kung health and nutritional status, it seems that either with or without with mongongo, they don't seem to have a very good nutritional status:
That's a very good example though why we should not take modern hunter-gatherer diets and life conditions as "ancestral" ie. a representative of evolutionary past -- they were usually confined to very harsh environments because of agriculturalists and pastoralists by the time researchers assessed their way of life. They might be eating lean meat and plants, but not because that makes them so healthy but because there isn't much else left over.
Saami are also herding reindeer, so they are also not strictly hunter-gatherers, but fatty fish is a great other asset. Unfortunately no detailed macros. The source suggests a great importance of fatty fish.
Good point re. modern HGs vs. ancestral. I just listened to an episode about the Clovis people, the ancestors of modern Native Americans, who lived all over North America 12-13k years ago (end of the last ice age) and were specialized in hunting mammoths. They apparently ate a 96% (!) megafauna diet. A single mammoth kill would last several families for months.
But just by looking up, even most mainstream wiki page says 35-40% megafauna and "Plant remains at Clovis sites (which are almost exclusively from eastern North America) primarily consist of food that can be easily gathered, such as fruit that required little processing, with little evidence of plant processing tools being found." - another evicence of an animal based, likely high fat palaeolithic diet.
My generic theory is that hunter-gatherer lifestyle is just not very efficient without the fat that megafauna yields, so most peoples either adopted agriculture or pastoralism, depending on the environment.
(Or the people who invented them were more successful economically than hunter-gatherers).
Pastoralism has the advantage of better individual health (one doesn't have to effectively process starches and plant toxins or have), but more political instability and maybe less population sustained. Agriculture seems to be more stable politically and can support more people, but with serious health consequences.
IIRC they analyzed the bone remains and found that they would've eaten 80-90% megafauna, some small game, and very minimal plants. But it's been a month or 2 that I listened to it.
I agree on the efficiency. I think this theory is common among carnivores: we used to get billions of "free" fat carolies from megafauna. Then the megafauna died out, either from the ice age ending, or us hunting them to extinction, or something else, or all of the above. Small game & fruit isn't energy dense enough to support us, so we had to invent agriculture and pastoralism like you say. Those seem to have come around the same time, 5-10k years ago.
Agreed with your thoughts on those societies. One seems to produce what we'd call "honor cultures" haha.
I have some data points that may interest you, or maybe not, just wanted to share.
I found fasting before I found you, and I've already spent years working up to it, and it's infinitely easier to me to eat absolutely nothing instead of quite a lot of other diets.
8 months ago, I performed a 24 day complete water fast, after that, I started eating as much as I could intentionally, for as long as I could. Keto, but fairly high protein (19.8% on average, most of the fat being drinking heavy cream)
That turned out to be 3500 - 4500 CAROLIES a day.
Biggest thing I noticed was being able to go outside by freezing temps with a tshirt, and not feeling like I was gonna freeze to death, I did gain weight, but a lot of it was muscle.
I'm 5'8, I started that fast at 178 lbs, and dropped to 160 lbs. (Before refeeding, which instantly adds approx 7.5lbs from digestive residue and water retention)
During the eating period afterwards, I went back up to a bit over 183lbs (in about 4 months, the months after, my weight was obscenely stable, +-4lbs at most)
I'm 9 days into another fast right now, and I'm losing weight like no tomorrow, about 1.25lbs a day, compared to 0.77lbs a day during the previous fast.
I'm not sure whether it's losing the unsat fats I had stored, or because I ate a ton of CAROLIES, but my weight loss has shown zero signs of slowing down, even though I'm at 170lbs right now.
Planning to go for at least 25 days this time, if I remember, I'll try to send you my weight graph if you want it.
I had to abort both fasts because of the side effects: I couldn't sleep. I wasn't hungry at all (especially on the second one) but I just couldn't fall asleep, pretty bad.
I do wonder why some people can seemingly fast much longer than others, I've never managed past 7 days (lots of willpower!) water fasting.
One theory I have lately is that the fasting jacks up my caffeine sensitivity, I was still consuming quite a lot of caffeine during the fast. Do you take any caffeine on your fasts?
I could try again but wean myself off of the caffeine before. Maybe I can last longer that way.
I found that increasing salt intake helped me sleep better while fasting (never had trouble the first two nights, but would quit after little or no sleep the third night). ... That said I've abandoned total fasts for my heavily modified version of the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD). I'm in the process of writing up my experience with (modified) FMD.
It took me a long while to be able to manage 3 days, let alone a week, so I definitely understand 5 days being torturous.
I personally still get hunger pangs all along the fast, they calm down significantly after day 4, but they never entirely go away.
As far as caffeine goes, fasting seems to jack up my sensitivity to absurd levels, while eating, I can drink 200mg of caffeine around 2pm and sleep soundly around midnight, but when fasting, my cutoff is at 11am, and it still harms my ability to fall asleep, pushes it forward about an hour or so.
And as to why some people can or can't fast for long _naturally_, I've noticed that most of the people who tell me they "sometimes forget to eat" are all naturally lean (some, even shredded), whatever the root cause of obesity is exacy, It seems to either make ghrelin depletion slower (as it should disappear within 3 days) or it activates another mechanism unrelated to it.
No, that's it - the 5 days weren't torturous AT ALL. I felt zero appetite or hunger the entire time, especially the second time.
Then I didn't sleep that night at all.
It's a very weird sudden cliff that none of the people for whom fasting works long-term seem to get.
But that your caffeine sensitivity goes way up could explain this; I pretty much megadose caffeine habitually (often 1g/day) and obviously increased sensitivity would massively fuck with my sleep.
I do think that "ability to fast" is basically a symptom of "good fuel partitioning." I think 5 days w/o ANY symptoms is quite a good sign in my case, and even on day 5 I didn't get "hungry" or anything very much. It was just the sleep.
I notice no mention of fasting - a collection of related practices that many people seem to find helpful and sustainable, with plenty of evidence and theory to support many. Not for everyone of course.
Fasting could be said to be temporarily zeroing out LA intake, being firmly out of the nutritional swamp and into ketosis, and forcing mobilisation of fat reserves - ideally to the extent of autophagy where fat cells and other dead/sick cells are actually consumed not just depleted.
Of course, very obese people likely dump a ton of LA into their blood from the fat stores, so they may have knock on problems later.
I didn't mention fasting because, in my experience and anecdotally, there's typically a rebound. If you're not consciously avoiding LA, you'll just feast with very high-LA foods after.
It might be another intervention that suits some people, but I'm less confident about it than about the others so far.
Yea could be. Anecdotally fasting seems to work for some people, but it's not clear to me why. I guess neither is the swamp/protein thing haha. Feels more difficult to make a recommendation, though, maybe just since I've personally never had success with it.
Just like I have a harder time recommending carbo stuff, since my experience is mostly on the keto side.
One blocker of CB1 (the big "munchies" receptor) is the herb Sceletium tortuosum, commonly known as kanna. I use it in a dry herb vaporizer, it works to kill munchies (pleasant relaxation too). It also has been made into a supplement called Zembrin.
They are usually used for cannabis so I think Amazon steers clear of them, but they really open up a world with many different herbs, generally ones that are used in tea. I use valerian, hops, yerba mate, as well as kanna. The first vaporizer I got was this one: https://tvape.com/litl-1.html which I like fine, although its extremely simple. They get very fancy and expensive, and once you get into them, its easy to start a collection :) My favorite, not expensive but very good to fully extract taste from herbs, is Dynavap. Its heat source has to come from a torch or flame though, it doesn't heat with its own battery: https://www.dynavap.com/products/the-b
Interesting, the munchies kill me. I don't find a lot of studies in a quick search and internet "folk knowledge" seems to say it is a wonder drug that can do everything. You noticed personal effects on appetite especially not true hunger? What's your dose and what would you rate out of 10, where 0 is no effect and 10 is had to remind yourself to eat dinner?
I use about a 1/4 teaspoon of chopped herb (not powdered) in a dry herb vaporizer, which tends to concentrate the effects of many herbs. It probably would be a 7 on your scale, for a couple of hours. I like it in the evening because it both eliminates snacking, and helps me sleep. I have never tried Zembrin, but my impression is that powdered kanna in a capsule would likely be stronger in effect. The best info about kanna is the reddit group r/kanna
Yes, if I'm really clinical about it for me eating is to resolve stress from frustration. whether caused by a specific difficult task or situation, or the general environment such as a very boring day at work
I saw this triangle very long back somewhere where the swamp was related to high insulin.
Later, the concept seemed to have gone lost.
To a diabetic, any movement to lower carb would be an improvement, A1c wise.
Asforc the Rice diet, my understanding was it doesn't necessarily worked for everyone--58% showed improvement, 26% no change and 13% got worse A1c wise-- was the data I read long back on HyperLipid.
I think a big part is the observation that many people lose lots of fat effortlessly doing keto, or some sort of vegan-adjacent rice/potato starch diet. But very few people do so inbetween.
Science wise there is the "Randle Cycle" which basically just describes a dynamic in the mitochondria: mitochondria that have recently oxidized fat are set to oxidize fat again, and same for glucose. It therefore takes a "context switch" or "fuel switch" to rapidly cycle between fats and glucose for energy. By mostly eating one of the 2 substrates, you can alleviate "pressure" on the mitochondria because they don't need to switch back and forth so much.
Context switching cost is a well studied phenomenon in computer science so it intuitively made sense to me.
Even on the 90% carb diet, you must be burning a lot of fat. Since, any carb surplus to current requirement is stored as glycogen and as glycogen store gets saturated, gets converted to fat.
Many people don't think much of Randle cycle. I think De Eades had some critique
I am honestly not sure how much of the carbs are converted into fat. I.e. any "surplus" (determined how/by whom?) or a constant amount or depending on demand/lack of existing fats..
Are GLP-1 agonists that bad? The wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLP-1_receptor_agonist for them suggests that there are some post-market reports of pancreatitis, but an actual study on adolescents it talks about said it dropped. And liver cancer also dropped, per the wiki.
As for lean mass... the first google result for "GLP-1 lean mass loss" for me is https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38937282/, which suggests that the estimate for lean mass reduction varies wildly between studies - between 15-60% - and that organ, bone, fluids, and water in fat tissue might be a major portion of this. Apparently, the skeletal muscle loss is commensurate for what you'd expect for someone who loses weight - which I take to mean, the muscle that was previously used to haul the fat around.
What do you think about going on a GLP-1 agonist to lose the weight (and, presumably, a lot of the stored PUFA), then switching to a maintenance low-seed-oil diet?
So why spends thousands and risk all these side effects when you can just drink cream? I don't get it.
Even if there were zero side effects I wouldn't take these.
> Apparently, the skeletal muscle loss is commensurate for what you'd expect for someone who loses weight
Yes, but this is based on the mainstream CICO idea that weight can only be lost through CICO starvation. Of course if you compare it to starvation, Ozempic is merely as bad or 3x as bad" (60%, the "normal" amount on CICO is about 25%).
Of course I propose you should lose close to 0% lean mass by using a diet that fixes fuel partitioning instead of starving yourself, like I did.
> What do you think about going on a GLP-1 agonist to lose the weight (and, presumably, a lot of the stored PUFA), then switching to a maintenance low-seed-oil diet?
I think this is a terrible idea, for the simple reason that the fat loss on it will be much slower than e.g. on ex150.
Why would you spend money and risk side effects to do something more slowly with much higher lean mass loss?
Have you heard about allulose? It's really holding up in scientific studies. If you eat enough of it, it will help break stalls, reverse fatty liver and correct your gut biome. It apparently protects against muscle loss as well. It would make a great experiment. This lady broke a two year stall after five years of keto (torpor, anyone?!) by consuming 25 grams per day 45 minutes prior to her evening meal. She has lost 10 pounds in a month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAmyRV3Fbgw I'm about to give a go.
It hasn't effected me too badly, and I've had up to 18 grams at one sitting in tea. It does move things along. They say this is not as bad if you increase your dose gradually, and that it does go away over time as your gut biome improves. It is a prebiotic.
I may have missed it in earlier posts, but are fancy (organic or pastured) whole chickens high or low in linoleic acid, assuming you roast them at home with no added seed oils?
It would depend on the feed used, so possibly. If the pastured chickens eat bugs or natural stuff, the linoleic acid content could be significantly lower. I'd still expect it to be higher than beef, but it could be, if I had to make up a number 8-12% instead of 20%. Maybe even 5%, but I doubt it'd reach the 1.5-2.5% of beef.
That said they could still be feeding organic/pastured chickens soybeans, for all I know. So personally I wouldn't risk it as long as I'm still mainly "detoxing" from PUFA.
I have a question not specifically related to this post. As I understand your basic method, you drink cream, ad lib, for a month, and ~1/3 lb beef, daily. You don't seem to deliberately limit the time of day you consume calories, nor do you appear to limit yourself to discrete meals per se (i.e. you snack on cream, ad lib). Do I correctly understand this?
And then, after approximately 4 weeks of this, you "refeed" by eating (gorging?) ad lib beef for a day (or two?).
Is that right?
If that's the way you do it, I assume the "refeed" / "feast" takes you out of ketosis, since such a high volume of protein would stimulate a significant insulin reaction, yes? Do you know how long it takes you to return to ketosis once you quit your "refeed"? And does exiting ketosis via protein instead of via carbs impact your Non-24 condition?
What I'm trying to figure out is why you need to limit protein on a daiily basis and why you need to "load up" on it periodically and what impact that kind of cycle might have on your efforts.
I'll say that there is a somewhat informal "schedule" w/ discreet meals, just out of.. convenience/habit?
95% of my days go like this:
1) Wake up, immediately begin drinking lots of coffee with lots of heavy cream
2) Eat "beef slop w/ tomato or alfredo sauce" for lunch
3) Stop coffee (and therefore cream) intake around 3pm, but more of a guideline than hard limit
4) Whip up a cup of heavy cream for dinner. This is usually enough so I don't feel hungry until I go to bed, sometimes I can't even finish the whipped cream. There have, on a few occasions, been days where I drank more heavy cream after the whipped cream dinner, for example if I was out all day and hadn't gotten enough cream overall in.
I do sometimes break this pattern, but there is a pattern if you will. I'm not sure how important this particular pattern is.
About the 30 days/refeeds: yup, that's pretty much it. I try not to gorge on the refeeds, frankly because it makes me feel bad even seed oil free and only "healthy" foods. Eating lots of protein makes me stuffed and uncomfortable for the rest of the day. I also don't limit myself to only beef, even though there is usually beef (e.g. steak, roast beef). I also eat cheese, sometimes yogurt, macadamia nuts (only low-PUFA nut), or dark chocolate on these.
I find that 1-2 days is fine if I don't gorge, but gorging and 3-4 days makes me feel very terrible and regain a lot of weight. So I've been trying to keep it lighter & on the shorter side lately.
I haven't measured my ketones regularly on the refeeds, but I would agree that at least I'd probably be in much shallower ketosis if any, compared to the 90% fat diet.
The Non-24 has never come back on the refeeds. Historically when I did have it come back from carbs, even very heavy carb intake took 3 days or so to trigger the Non-24. So it could be that I just never did the refeeds long enough for the Non-24 to come back, or even on high protein, maybe I'm in enough ketosis (0.3-0.5mmol/l or so?) to suppress the effect.
Honestly I don't know if I need to load up periodically. I started out doing it as a precaution, and as a "controlled cheat day" type thing. These days I barely need/desire the "cheat day" part except for cheese and sometimes smaller things like "Oh I haven't had macadamias in 6 months, that'd be nice on the next refeed."
I've been trying a sneedless high-fat diet protocol lately to some moderate success, and I'd just like to note that coconut oil is a pretty great (and delicious in its unrefined form) fat, especially for anyone who can't do ad-lib heavy cream due to lactose sensitivity.
It also works well as a dessert -- a tiny bite of dark chocolate can lend its flavor to a much greater quantity of coconut oil. This does make it slightly swampier due to the sugar in the chocolate, but anecdotally this doesn't seem to be an issue so long as protein intake is kept low enough.
Can you eat a lot of coconut oil? I find it somewhat.. self-limiting. In terms of digestion, I don't do nearly as well on it as cream.
I did once make a "coconut oil cookie" and added that to my diet for 7 (or 14? I forget) days, and I gained weight :( But it wasn't instead of the cream, it was on top.
So I'm somewhat (irrationally?) skeptical of coconut oil, just so you know. The fatty acids in coconut are very weird compared to other saturated fats.
I haven't noticed any issues digesting coconut oil myself. I ramped up slowly at first, but I probably got about half of my calories yesterday from coconut oil and ate about half a cup (with some dark chocolate chips stirred in) in a single sitting at dinner.
I don't think that a "weird" fatty acid composition is necessarily a bad thing. Certainly coconut oil is absurdly high in lauric acid compared to other non-palm-tree-derived fats, but when I looked at the literature I didn't see any obvious reasons to be wary of high lauric acid.
The Peaters like coconut oil because they think it raises core body temperature and it's hard to put on weight from coconut oil. At least some research papers I've read on how lauric acid is metabolised make similar claims ("thermogenic effect" and "less likely to be stored in adipose tissue"), and anecdotally the thermogenesis at least seems to be real.
Well if you can stomach that much, might not be much of an issue digestive wise. I tend to get more liquid stool than I'd love when eating much coconut oil. On cream it's pretty much perfect and so I do notice when it goes "slightly less optimal."
I don't know if the Peaters are correct about "hard to put on weight from coconut oil." I sure have and it wasn't muscle, it was fat. Peter from Hyperlipid also suspects that coconut oil rapidly has a U-shaped effect where it becomes bad above small quantities.
Peaters also generally tend to eat only very little of it, maybe 1 tbsp. There are some exceptions like Thermobolic, but most Peaters don't exactly mainline it.
I'm sort of vaguely skeptical about high coconut consumption, but I don't have anything concrete. Since I do better on cream anyway, easy for me to not have to make that decision.
But if you're trying it and it works, hey, why not. Plus will be an interesting data point.
When I was fruitarian for a while I tried eating lots of coconut, but the meat has so much fiber it was really painful lol. Also extremely chewy if you don't blend it.
I found your article very interesting. I knew seed oils are problematic but never really why. I still don’t. Your article was so packed with info I’ll have to reread it for a deeper understanding. I’ve managed to lose over 40 lbs doing keto, then carnivore and now ketovore. I dropped most seed oils when going into Carnivore and now try to avoid but I haven’t been too extreme with it.
Congrats! Like I say in the post, carnivore is a pretty great way to reduce seed oils. Just stay away from the bacon and roast chicken, heh. Beef bacon is really good! Whole Food sells a brand. I don't eat it regularly, so it doesn't matter much that it's slightly more expensive.
excellent summary of your work so far. maybe a Twitter-article version for easy sharing there, too, would help educate people.
Good idea
If seed oils were invented in 1860, then your statement "Almost nobody restricted food intake 100 years ago [1925], and yet, somehow, almost nobody was obese." doesn't quite make sense. Seed oils had been around in increasing quantity for 65 years at that point. Crisco came onto the market in 1911. From their website: "In 1911, Crisco – the first-ever shortening made entirely of vegetable oil – was born. Clad in pristine white-paper overwrap, Crisco was seen as a more “pure” and economical alternative to animal fat and butter. Soon after our first print and radio ads debuted, products flew off of the shelves."
I do think seed oils play a part but the obesity epidemic wasn't really a thing until the 1970's. It seems more like a perfect storm including the usual suspects: pesticides, artificial colors and flavors, corn syrup, certain medical interventions, fat fear promulgated since the early 1960's and sun fear around the same time. I do think that getting seed oils out of one's diet is one of the most important first steps to take though- just doing that eliminates most of the other processed junk too.
You're right, my numbers were a bit vague. It's over 100 years at this point.
My understanding is that seed oils were used around 1900, but Crisco was the first "real, official" push where they weren't just adulterating existing fats like lard with it.
So the prevalence would've grown slowly over time, starting from almost 0 in 1860, to already a heart disease epidemic around 1900-1920, to crazy levels in 1950, even crazier in 1970, and still growing..
The obesity epidemic was actually already a thing in 1900. Compared to before. There's some interesting stuff about it in Knobbe's book, I think, and one of Tucker Goodrich's posts.
It just looks like 1970 was "the starting point" because on an exponential curve, there always seems to be "the point" but it's basically an optic illusion. If it continues for 50 more years, it'll look like 2010 is that point where it takes off.
That said, could very well be that all those other factors you mention play a huge part too. Safest thing (and almost only option when avoiding seed oils) is to cook everything yourself anyway, so might as well avoid as much other nonsense as possible.
There are several high-fat ancestral diets like Plains Indians a notable example, also all Arctic peoples, not just the Inuit, but also Saami and other Asian tundra Hunter-gatherers. But yeah, most of the extanct ketogenic diets are of pastoral peoples, since contemporary wild game is so lean. Pastoralism (and dairy) is one typical hack to get more animal fat.
(though an elephant at 10% body fat has still 400kg fat...) I am not sure about the !kung being high fat as well, they have a plant staple mongongo which is 80% fat.
Do you happen to have any studies or similar with detailed macro % for these? I'm always looking for more data to add to the swamp map.
I don't know, people were hardly interested in macros in the 70s when these kind of studies could have been conducted on traditional diets, but will try. Also, for example, African wildlife suffered a lot from colonial hunting in the 1800s, so studies from the 70s might not reflect diet composition from even a few hundred years ago.
I found a re-assessment of the !Kung health and nutritional status, it seems that either with or without with mongongo, they don't seem to have a very good nutritional status:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41262771?read-now=1&seq=15#page_scan_tab_contents
That's a very good example though why we should not take modern hunter-gatherer diets and life conditions as "ancestral" ie. a representative of evolutionary past -- they were usually confined to very harsh environments because of agriculturalists and pastoralists by the time researchers assessed their way of life. They might be eating lean meat and plants, but not because that makes them so healthy but because there isn't much else left over.
Saami are also herding reindeer, so they are also not strictly hunter-gatherers, but fatty fish is a great other asset. Unfortunately no detailed macros. The source suggests a great importance of fatty fish.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2080452/pdf/CroatMedJ_47_0553.pdf
This one might have macros but unfortunately full text is not available:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10208068/
Thanks, I'll check it out.
Good point re. modern HGs vs. ancestral. I just listened to an episode about the Clovis people, the ancestors of modern Native Americans, who lived all over North America 12-13k years ago (end of the last ice age) and were specialized in hunting mammoths. They apparently ate a 96% (!) megafauna diet. A single mammoth kill would last several families for months.
Very interesting, do you have a link somewhere?
But just by looking up, even most mainstream wiki page says 35-40% megafauna and "Plant remains at Clovis sites (which are almost exclusively from eastern North America) primarily consist of food that can be easily gathered, such as fruit that required little processing, with little evidence of plant processing tools being found." - another evicence of an animal based, likely high fat palaeolithic diet.
My generic theory is that hunter-gatherer lifestyle is just not very efficient without the fat that megafauna yields, so most peoples either adopted agriculture or pastoralism, depending on the environment.
(Or the people who invented them were more successful economically than hunter-gatherers).
Pastoralism has the advantage of better individual health (one doesn't have to effectively process starches and plant toxins or have), but more political instability and maybe less population sustained. Agriculture seems to be more stable politically and can support more people, but with serious health consequences.
I think it was this podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io3OirCBAB4
IIRC they analyzed the bone remains and found that they would've eaten 80-90% megafauna, some small game, and very minimal plants. But it's been a month or 2 that I listened to it.
I agree on the efficiency. I think this theory is common among carnivores: we used to get billions of "free" fat carolies from megafauna. Then the megafauna died out, either from the ice age ending, or us hunting them to extinction, or something else, or all of the above. Small game & fruit isn't energy dense enough to support us, so we had to invent agriculture and pastoralism like you say. Those seem to have come around the same time, 5-10k years ago.
Agreed with your thoughts on those societies. One seems to produce what we'd call "honor cultures" haha.
Hey man, love the content
I have some data points that may interest you, or maybe not, just wanted to share.
I found fasting before I found you, and I've already spent years working up to it, and it's infinitely easier to me to eat absolutely nothing instead of quite a lot of other diets.
8 months ago, I performed a 24 day complete water fast, after that, I started eating as much as I could intentionally, for as long as I could. Keto, but fairly high protein (19.8% on average, most of the fat being drinking heavy cream)
That turned out to be 3500 - 4500 CAROLIES a day.
Biggest thing I noticed was being able to go outside by freezing temps with a tshirt, and not feeling like I was gonna freeze to death, I did gain weight, but a lot of it was muscle.
I'm 5'8, I started that fast at 178 lbs, and dropped to 160 lbs. (Before refeeding, which instantly adds approx 7.5lbs from digestive residue and water retention)
During the eating period afterwards, I went back up to a bit over 183lbs (in about 4 months, the months after, my weight was obscenely stable, +-4lbs at most)
I'm 9 days into another fast right now, and I'm losing weight like no tomorrow, about 1.25lbs a day, compared to 0.77lbs a day during the previous fast.
I'm not sure whether it's losing the unsat fats I had stored, or because I ate a ton of CAROLIES, but my weight loss has shown zero signs of slowing down, even though I'm at 170lbs right now.
Planning to go for at least 25 days this time, if I remember, I'll try to send you my weight graph if you want it.
Nice! If you haven't seen, I recently water fasted for 5 days twice: https://www.exfatloss.com/p/ex_fast-5-day-water-fast-down-2lbs
I had to abort both fasts because of the side effects: I couldn't sleep. I wasn't hungry at all (especially on the second one) but I just couldn't fall asleep, pretty bad.
I do wonder why some people can seemingly fast much longer than others, I've never managed past 7 days (lots of willpower!) water fasting.
One theory I have lately is that the fasting jacks up my caffeine sensitivity, I was still consuming quite a lot of caffeine during the fast. Do you take any caffeine on your fasts?
I could try again but wean myself off of the caffeine before. Maybe I can last longer that way.
I found that increasing salt intake helped me sleep better while fasting (never had trouble the first two nights, but would quit after little or no sleep the third night). ... That said I've abandoned total fasts for my heavily modified version of the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD). I'm in the process of writing up my experience with (modified) FMD.
LMK when you've written it up, interested!
I've previously water fasted w/ salts and this time without, that didn't seem to make a difference re the sleep.
I have (finally) completed my article on the Fasting Mimicking Diet:
https://theotherendofthegalaxy.substack.com/p/improving-body-composition
I'll check it out, thanks!
It took me a long while to be able to manage 3 days, let alone a week, so I definitely understand 5 days being torturous.
I personally still get hunger pangs all along the fast, they calm down significantly after day 4, but they never entirely go away.
As far as caffeine goes, fasting seems to jack up my sensitivity to absurd levels, while eating, I can drink 200mg of caffeine around 2pm and sleep soundly around midnight, but when fasting, my cutoff is at 11am, and it still harms my ability to fall asleep, pushes it forward about an hour or so.
And as to why some people can or can't fast for long _naturally_, I've noticed that most of the people who tell me they "sometimes forget to eat" are all naturally lean (some, even shredded), whatever the root cause of obesity is exacy, It seems to either make ghrelin depletion slower (as it should disappear within 3 days) or it activates another mechanism unrelated to it.
No, that's it - the 5 days weren't torturous AT ALL. I felt zero appetite or hunger the entire time, especially the second time.
Then I didn't sleep that night at all.
It's a very weird sudden cliff that none of the people for whom fasting works long-term seem to get.
But that your caffeine sensitivity goes way up could explain this; I pretty much megadose caffeine habitually (often 1g/day) and obviously increased sensitivity would massively fuck with my sleep.
I do think that "ability to fast" is basically a symptom of "good fuel partitioning." I think 5 days w/o ANY symptoms is quite a good sign in my case, and even on day 5 I didn't get "hungry" or anything very much. It was just the sleep.
Great writeup, thank you.
I notice no mention of fasting - a collection of related practices that many people seem to find helpful and sustainable, with plenty of evidence and theory to support many. Not for everyone of course.
Fasting could be said to be temporarily zeroing out LA intake, being firmly out of the nutritional swamp and into ketosis, and forcing mobilisation of fat reserves - ideally to the extent of autophagy where fat cells and other dead/sick cells are actually consumed not just depleted.
Of course, very obese people likely dump a ton of LA into their blood from the fat stores, so they may have knock on problems later.
I didn't mention fasting because, in my experience and anecdotally, there's typically a rebound. If you're not consciously avoiding LA, you'll just feast with very high-LA foods after.
It might be another intervention that suits some people, but I'm less confident about it than about the others so far.
That's true - and guilty as charged.
I wonder if we can get somewhere with a temporary intervention blocking the endocannibanoids long enough to break habits and entrench new ones.
Yea could be. Anecdotally fasting seems to work for some people, but it's not clear to me why. I guess neither is the swamp/protein thing haha. Feels more difficult to make a recommendation, though, maybe just since I've personally never had success with it.
Just like I have a harder time recommending carbo stuff, since my experience is mostly on the keto side.
One blocker of CB1 (the big "munchies" receptor) is the herb Sceletium tortuosum, commonly known as kanna. I use it in a dry herb vaporizer, it works to kill munchies (pleasant relaxation too). It also has been made into a supplement called Zembrin.
I entered 'dry herb vaporizer' in Amazon and nothing appropriate turned up. What brand/model do you use?
They are usually used for cannabis so I think Amazon steers clear of them, but they really open up a world with many different herbs, generally ones that are used in tea. I use valerian, hops, yerba mate, as well as kanna. The first vaporizer I got was this one: https://tvape.com/litl-1.html which I like fine, although its extremely simple. They get very fancy and expensive, and once you get into them, its easy to start a collection :) My favorite, not expensive but very good to fully extract taste from herbs, is Dynavap. Its heat source has to come from a torch or flame though, it doesn't heat with its own battery: https://www.dynavap.com/products/the-b
Interesting, the munchies kill me. I don't find a lot of studies in a quick search and internet "folk knowledge" seems to say it is a wonder drug that can do everything. You noticed personal effects on appetite especially not true hunger? What's your dose and what would you rate out of 10, where 0 is no effect and 10 is had to remind yourself to eat dinner?
I use about a 1/4 teaspoon of chopped herb (not powdered) in a dry herb vaporizer, which tends to concentrate the effects of many herbs. It probably would be a 7 on your scale, for a couple of hours. I like it in the evening because it both eliminates snacking, and helps me sleep. I have never tried Zembrin, but my impression is that powdered kanna in a capsule would likely be stronger in effect. The best info about kanna is the reddit group r/kanna
"kill you" how? You mean they affect you a lot?
Yes, if I'm really clinical about it for me eating is to resolve stress from frustration. whether caused by a specific difficult task or situation, or the general environment such as a very boring day at work
What is science behind the Swamp?
I saw this triangle very long back somewhere where the swamp was related to high insulin.
Later, the concept seemed to have gone lost.
To a diabetic, any movement to lower carb would be an improvement, A1c wise.
Asforc the Rice diet, my understanding was it doesn't necessarily worked for everyone--58% showed improvement, 26% no change and 13% got worse A1c wise-- was the data I read long back on HyperLipid.
I think a big part is the observation that many people lose lots of fat effortlessly doing keto, or some sort of vegan-adjacent rice/potato starch diet. But very few people do so inbetween.
Science wise there is the "Randle Cycle" which basically just describes a dynamic in the mitochondria: mitochondria that have recently oxidized fat are set to oxidize fat again, and same for glucose. It therefore takes a "context switch" or "fuel switch" to rapidly cycle between fats and glucose for energy. By mostly eating one of the 2 substrates, you can alleviate "pressure" on the mitochondria because they don't need to switch back and forth so much.
Context switching cost is a well studied phenomenon in computer science so it intuitively made sense to me.
Even on the 90% carb diet, you must be burning a lot of fat. Since, any carb surplus to current requirement is stored as glycogen and as glycogen store gets saturated, gets converted to fat.
Many people don't think much of Randle cycle. I think De Eades had some critique
Well, what makes it a surplus?
I am honestly not sure how much of the carbs are converted into fat. I.e. any "surplus" (determined how/by whom?) or a constant amount or depending on demand/lack of existing fats..
In fed state, you burn carb (if consuming catbs).
In fasted state (when the blood sugar comes down) you burn glucose produced by the liver plus fat.
So I would have to wait until my blood glucose has come down until I eat again?
Naturally, indeed why would one feel hungry if blood sugar is still high
Are GLP-1 agonists that bad? The wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLP-1_receptor_agonist for them suggests that there are some post-market reports of pancreatitis, but an actual study on adolescents it talks about said it dropped. And liver cancer also dropped, per the wiki.
As for lean mass... the first google result for "GLP-1 lean mass loss" for me is https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38937282/, which suggests that the estimate for lean mass reduction varies wildly between studies - between 15-60% - and that organ, bone, fluids, and water in fat tissue might be a major portion of this. Apparently, the skeletal muscle loss is commensurate for what you'd expect for someone who loses weight - which I take to mean, the muscle that was previously used to haul the fat around.
What do you think about going on a GLP-1 agonist to lose the weight (and, presumably, a lot of the stored PUFA), then switching to a maintenance low-seed-oil diet?
For one, I think they're not particularly impressive. Ozempic is shockingly ineffective at fat loss compared to "magic internet diets." Even the best responders to the highest dose of Tirzepatide did worse than I did on the cream diet: https://www.exfatloss.com/p/the-totally-speculative-reason-i?utm_source=publication-search
So why spends thousands and risk all these side effects when you can just drink cream? I don't get it.
Even if there were zero side effects I wouldn't take these.
> Apparently, the skeletal muscle loss is commensurate for what you'd expect for someone who loses weight
Yes, but this is based on the mainstream CICO idea that weight can only be lost through CICO starvation. Of course if you compare it to starvation, Ozempic is merely as bad or 3x as bad" (60%, the "normal" amount on CICO is about 25%).
Of course I propose you should lose close to 0% lean mass by using a diet that fixes fuel partitioning instead of starving yourself, like I did.
> What do you think about going on a GLP-1 agonist to lose the weight (and, presumably, a lot of the stored PUFA), then switching to a maintenance low-seed-oil diet?
I think this is a terrible idea, for the simple reason that the fat loss on it will be much slower than e.g. on ex150.
Why would you spend money and risk side effects to do something more slowly with much higher lean mass loss?
Great summary. So handy to share with friends.
Have you heard about allulose? It's really holding up in scientific studies. If you eat enough of it, it will help break stalls, reverse fatty liver and correct your gut biome. It apparently protects against muscle loss as well. It would make a great experiment. This lady broke a two year stall after five years of keto (torpor, anyone?!) by consuming 25 grams per day 45 minutes prior to her evening meal. She has lost 10 pounds in a month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAmyRV3Fbgw I'm about to give a go.
Some links:
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/10/2/160
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7071329/
Overview: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/allulose#:~:text=It%20may%20increase%20fat%20loss,before%20conclusions%20can%20be%20made
I have heard of it, but haven't used it. Apparently some people get digestive distress from it?
Let me know how it works for you!
It hasn't effected me too badly, and I've had up to 18 grams at one sitting in tea. It does move things along. They say this is not as bad if you increase your dose gradually, and that it does go away over time as your gut biome improves. It is a prebiotic.
I may have missed it in earlier posts, but are fancy (organic or pastured) whole chickens high or low in linoleic acid, assuming you roast them at home with no added seed oils?
It would depend on the feed used, so possibly. If the pastured chickens eat bugs or natural stuff, the linoleic acid content could be significantly lower. I'd still expect it to be higher than beef, but it could be, if I had to make up a number 8-12% instead of 20%. Maybe even 5%, but I doubt it'd reach the 1.5-2.5% of beef.
That said they could still be feeding organic/pastured chickens soybeans, for all I know. So personally I wouldn't risk it as long as I'm still mainly "detoxing" from PUFA.
Great summary!
It's easy for us people who've never been obese to forget how hard it can be to accomplish what you've accomplished. Congrats on all the work done!
Thanks!
I have a question not specifically related to this post. As I understand your basic method, you drink cream, ad lib, for a month, and ~1/3 lb beef, daily. You don't seem to deliberately limit the time of day you consume calories, nor do you appear to limit yourself to discrete meals per se (i.e. you snack on cream, ad lib). Do I correctly understand this?
And then, after approximately 4 weeks of this, you "refeed" by eating (gorging?) ad lib beef for a day (or two?).
Is that right?
If that's the way you do it, I assume the "refeed" / "feast" takes you out of ketosis, since such a high volume of protein would stimulate a significant insulin reaction, yes? Do you know how long it takes you to return to ketosis once you quit your "refeed"? And does exiting ketosis via protein instead of via carbs impact your Non-24 condition?
What I'm trying to figure out is why you need to limit protein on a daiily basis and why you need to "load up" on it periodically and what impact that kind of cycle might have on your efforts.
Largely correct.
I'll say that there is a somewhat informal "schedule" w/ discreet meals, just out of.. convenience/habit?
95% of my days go like this:
1) Wake up, immediately begin drinking lots of coffee with lots of heavy cream
2) Eat "beef slop w/ tomato or alfredo sauce" for lunch
3) Stop coffee (and therefore cream) intake around 3pm, but more of a guideline than hard limit
4) Whip up a cup of heavy cream for dinner. This is usually enough so I don't feel hungry until I go to bed, sometimes I can't even finish the whipped cream. There have, on a few occasions, been days where I drank more heavy cream after the whipped cream dinner, for example if I was out all day and hadn't gotten enough cream overall in.
I do sometimes break this pattern, but there is a pattern if you will. I'm not sure how important this particular pattern is.
About the 30 days/refeeds: yup, that's pretty much it. I try not to gorge on the refeeds, frankly because it makes me feel bad even seed oil free and only "healthy" foods. Eating lots of protein makes me stuffed and uncomfortable for the rest of the day. I also don't limit myself to only beef, even though there is usually beef (e.g. steak, roast beef). I also eat cheese, sometimes yogurt, macadamia nuts (only low-PUFA nut), or dark chocolate on these.
I find that 1-2 days is fine if I don't gorge, but gorging and 3-4 days makes me feel very terrible and regain a lot of weight. So I've been trying to keep it lighter & on the shorter side lately.
I haven't measured my ketones regularly on the refeeds, but I would agree that at least I'd probably be in much shallower ketosis if any, compared to the 90% fat diet.
The Non-24 has never come back on the refeeds. Historically when I did have it come back from carbs, even very heavy carb intake took 3 days or so to trigger the Non-24. So it could be that I just never did the refeeds long enough for the Non-24 to come back, or even on high protein, maybe I'm in enough ketosis (0.3-0.5mmol/l or so?) to suppress the effect.
Honestly I don't know if I need to load up periodically. I started out doing it as a precaution, and as a "controlled cheat day" type thing. These days I barely need/desire the "cheat day" part except for cheese and sometimes smaller things like "Oh I haven't had macadamias in 6 months, that'd be nice on the next refeed."
I've been trying a sneedless high-fat diet protocol lately to some moderate success, and I'd just like to note that coconut oil is a pretty great (and delicious in its unrefined form) fat, especially for anyone who can't do ad-lib heavy cream due to lactose sensitivity.
It also works well as a dessert -- a tiny bite of dark chocolate can lend its flavor to a much greater quantity of coconut oil. This does make it slightly swampier due to the sugar in the chocolate, but anecdotally this doesn't seem to be an issue so long as protein intake is kept low enough.
Heh "sneedless" I love it.
Can you eat a lot of coconut oil? I find it somewhat.. self-limiting. In terms of digestion, I don't do nearly as well on it as cream.
I did once make a "coconut oil cookie" and added that to my diet for 7 (or 14? I forget) days, and I gained weight :( But it wasn't instead of the cream, it was on top.
So I'm somewhat (irrationally?) skeptical of coconut oil, just so you know. The fatty acids in coconut are very weird compared to other saturated fats.
I haven't noticed any issues digesting coconut oil myself. I ramped up slowly at first, but I probably got about half of my calories yesterday from coconut oil and ate about half a cup (with some dark chocolate chips stirred in) in a single sitting at dinner.
I don't think that a "weird" fatty acid composition is necessarily a bad thing. Certainly coconut oil is absurdly high in lauric acid compared to other non-palm-tree-derived fats, but when I looked at the literature I didn't see any obvious reasons to be wary of high lauric acid.
The Peaters like coconut oil because they think it raises core body temperature and it's hard to put on weight from coconut oil. At least some research papers I've read on how lauric acid is metabolised make similar claims ("thermogenic effect" and "less likely to be stored in adipose tissue"), and anecdotally the thermogenesis at least seems to be real.
Well if you can stomach that much, might not be much of an issue digestive wise. I tend to get more liquid stool than I'd love when eating much coconut oil. On cream it's pretty much perfect and so I do notice when it goes "slightly less optimal."
I don't know if the Peaters are correct about "hard to put on weight from coconut oil." I sure have and it wasn't muscle, it was fat. Peter from Hyperlipid also suspects that coconut oil rapidly has a U-shaped effect where it becomes bad above small quantities.
Peaters also generally tend to eat only very little of it, maybe 1 tbsp. There are some exceptions like Thermobolic, but most Peaters don't exactly mainline it.
I'm sort of vaguely skeptical about high coconut consumption, but I don't have anything concrete. Since I do better on cream anyway, easy for me to not have to make that decision.
But if you're trying it and it works, hey, why not. Plus will be an interesting data point.
I eat fresh coconut meat. Nowadays not much but at one time, pretty decent quantities, say almost half a coconut.
Didn't had digestive issues but a friend got laxative effect from coconut oil.
When I was fruitarian for a while I tried eating lots of coconut, but the meat has so much fiber it was really painful lol. Also extremely chewy if you don't blend it.
I found your article very interesting. I knew seed oils are problematic but never really why. I still don’t. Your article was so packed with info I’ll have to reread it for a deeper understanding. I’ve managed to lose over 40 lbs doing keto, then carnivore and now ketovore. I dropped most seed oils when going into Carnivore and now try to avoid but I haven’t been too extreme with it.
Congrats! Like I say in the post, carnivore is a pretty great way to reduce seed oils. Just stay away from the bacon and roast chicken, heh. Beef bacon is really good! Whole Food sells a brand. I don't eat it regularly, so it doesn't matter much that it's slightly more expensive.