It's also worth reminding people that by historical and pre-historical norms, consistent access to more food than a person needs is shocking to the point of being unbelievable. When Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted "Land of Cockaigne" towards the close of the 16th century, he couldn't even imagine the kind of food-availability we see in America today.
I'm not sure this is generally true. I've heard enough "debunkings" of the hard life of hunter gatherers. While they didn't have Wal-mart, slaying 1 bison would've been enough to feed a family for months. They did have cooling and air drying as preservation methods.
There's an 'unknown unknowns' problem with how hard their lives might have been, though. While there are places marked by abundance in ancestral time, those areas also show more evidence of pressure from other human groups. Various peoples wouldn't have been moving into inhospitable climes or adopting early labor-intensive agricultural methods if there had been easier choices available. Especially regarding agriculture, archaeological records indicate that human health outcomes declined initially upon its adoption.
Agreed. I only point out the relative scarcity of food to help dietary normies understand how not-normal eating (in general) is now. There are lots of layers to this not-normalness, including our food being a lot less fermented (including rotten) than our ancestors would have found enjoyable, or how we do more eating alone, or how many or most seem never to recover from the great flavor restriction that evolution puts on the palate around age four, or how little time we spend now intimately engaged in food preparation.
Thought I might send you an update after almost 3 weeks experimenting with high cream:
Summary: First week was amazing, second week stalled, third week was derailed by activities with my kids. The diet is fully satisfying but really socially awkward.
Middle aged dad with a desk job. Stayed active into my 30s, but responsibilities and joint pain have led to being less and less fit. Started the new year at 210 and 6 feet tall. Back when I was in my best shape, I was around 185, but I have not been below 190 in about 7 years.
I had already discovered that I get less joint pain with a Keto diet (and have tried nearly every variant). Using basic Keto (and a detour into Potato Diet, which was as painful for my joints as you would expect), I got down to 201 in March and was pretty stuck. Joint pain was less but not gone, and weight was stable.
I mixed cream with unsweetened cocoa powder for breakfast and dinner, then beef with vegetables and eggs for lunch. I started with higher protein than you did (about double), assuming that would matter since I have less weight to lose than you do.
After 1 week, my weight was 196 and I had the least amount of joint pain I have had in around 10 years. The pain just turned off. I had been to multiple specialists over the years, and all said that there was nothing that they could do. And 1 week of cream left me feeling amazing, even after coming from a Keto diet.
After the second week, there was no change in weight at all. Still 196, though a noticeable change in waist size from when I was 201 just a two weeks earlier. My next thought is that maybe the protein is still too high for sustained weight loss. I started dialing down the protein.
But then I hit an anniversary, and three end-of-year activity banquets for my kids. I am up to 199 with a plan to try lower protein again. I have not yet figured out how to work with major disruptions. I need to find an equivalent to taking one of the kids out for ice cream or nachos, and things to eat when the supplied meals are all pizza and sandwiches.
It's absolutely expected that the initial water weight drop only lasts for 5-7 days. The stall after that could be a regular old stall (I've had 14 day stalls on this) or it could be that you lost a little fat but gained a little lean mass. If you hit a stall week, I'd give it another week of just keeping things the same just to double check. You can also go by your waist/pants size: if your weight stalls but your pants get loose, that's a good sign that the scale doesn't catch. Just an idea.
Getting derailed sucks, but it's not a huge deal in the greater scheme of things. I usually have to spend the next 5-10 days getting it back down. Oh well, you'll reach your dream weight 5-10 days later ;)
For the kids meals I don't really have a good strategy, I don't have kids. But do you really think the kids would notice/mind if you don't eat the doritos or ice cream? Just get a coffee or sparkling water to slowly sip while everybody's busy eating doritos.
Since you only really need to eat 2x per day on the diet (and could maybe even do 1x?), you could also schedule around these events. Copious cream in your cocoa for breakfast, buy packaged roast beef from the store over lunch and eat half of it (or whatever fits the protein), toss rest in fridge for later. Fast during the sandwich thing. Make whipped cream when you get home. You should only have to shift your eating schedule a few hours.
PS: Super interesting about your joint pain. I can only wonder what it is. Potatos also made me feel like crap, especially with the skins on. I got rashes, not joint pain. Wonder if what's helping you is low vegetables, low protein...? You could give full carnivore a go, lots of people reporting improvements like that.
I have tried carnivore, both high fat and high protein. I didn't notice a big difference in terms of joint pain or weight lost compared to a more conventional Keto diet. I just spent more money and more preparation time for about the same result. Cream has been far more effective. Maybe it is connected to how low the protein was? I was around 70g per day the first week, which is higher than you are using, but lower than I had during any of my carnivore attempts.
Potatoes were no worse than any other moderate to high carb diet for joint pain, and I did lose weight.
With regards to family and community events, hopefully I can get my weight low enough that taking a break for a meal every week or two will not be a problem. I just need to make sure that it really is every week or two.
Yea honestly it sounds like you'd still be on a slight down trend. Some of those extra pounds are water so they'll come off quick. If you go down 3lbs a week and back up 2, that's still a win if it keeps happening :)
I think there is a genetic component to it, they do seem to get diabetic at nearly the same rate. Not quite like Americans, but up there with high western levels. Whereas they're absolutely insanely low-obesity by BMI, not just among rich nations, but overall.
But I could also imagine that they eat very little protein and very little PUFA, both of which seems the case anecdotally and from what (little) I understand of Japanese cuisine. Protein/PUFA are my main hypotheses right now.
Japanese eat less calories, less fat and vastly more omega 3. Only Japanese men eat significantly less protein than American men, females are about the same.
In regards to PUFA, in a direct test against SFA in humans it has been shown that overfeeding PUFA causes much higher lean mass gains, while overfeeding SFA causes much higher visceral fat accumulation. The paper is below:
That first paper seems to show that American women eat 150% the LA+ARA compared to Japanese women, and for men it's 210%? Americans also eat more SFA, but the difference is the largest in LA+ARA.
Calories is a tautology, it doesn't answer the "why" or "how" questions.
The second study isn't devastating to the seed oil crowd, it's a joke :) I'm only a few pages in and it's already done everything wrong. It doesn't disprove anything.
1) They recruited lean people. People who are naturally lean obviously won't have the susceptibility to PUFAs if that is a thing.
2) They chose palm oil, which is over 9% Linoleic Acid and therefore would cause the exact issues the seed oil people are complaining about, lol. Palm oil is more unsaturated than it is saturated (if by a very thin margin).
To test this for real, what they'd need to do is:
1) Take obese people
2) Put them on a near-0 (as best as possible) baseline
3) Do they lose weight?
4) Put half of them back on a normal/high PUFA diet
For your point 1) about how they should use obese people instead of lean, I find it difficult to get my head around it. It's much easier for obese people to improve their body composition than people that are already lean, so the results are stronger by showing up in lean people.
For your point 2) you are saying that both diets have too much PUFA. Calculating the figures I see the high PUFA group gets 12.9% of their calories from PUFA while the low PUFA group gets 4.5%. I'm not going to get into an argument about what level of PUFA is considered unholy ('this guy had some PUFA in pork he ate 4 years ago so all results are meaningless" etc.). as people are making up numbers without any scientific basis but do you not think it's incredible that much higher PUFA intake caused a much better lean mass to fat gain when overeating? It's the exact opposite of what the anti-seed oilers are saying! And it's in hard human trial data, not some animal study, or worse, some mechanical speculation.
I will be scoffing down walnuts on my next bulk to get the lean gains.
1) Yes, it is easier for obese people to improve body composition than for lean people. But testing the lean people doesn't prove/disprove the point. It's as if you argued that we should test car repair kits on functioning cars instead of broken cars. It's not going to prove the point either way. What do we expect the tools to do, supercharge the car?
2) I can't explain the effect, but it's also not strong. 3lbs gained in 7 weeks might as well be statistical noise from a DEXA. I had much bigger lean mass gain than that in 4 weeks myself. For all we know the PUFA group might've gotten inflammation, and retained more water to fight it, which counts as lean mass. Total speculation, but the study just doesn't show a strong effect. Plus they tested this with 45% carb muffins, so at the very least we'd have to assume that PUFA/SFA in combination with high carbs and sugar does this.
For the record, I'm not 100% on PUFA did obesity. But it does fit the data better than any other hypothesis I can find IF you assume a very low threshold. Common number I see is 5g PUFA per 1,000kcal, i.e. basically trace amounts. One spoon of commercial salad dressing per day would easily be enough.
Is that very low threshold amount true, or are people wrong? I don't know. But this study doesn't disprove it, either.
It's also worth reminding people that by historical and pre-historical norms, consistent access to more food than a person needs is shocking to the point of being unbelievable. When Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted "Land of Cockaigne" towards the close of the 16th century, he couldn't even imagine the kind of food-availability we see in America today.
I'm not sure this is generally true. I've heard enough "debunkings" of the hard life of hunter gatherers. While they didn't have Wal-mart, slaying 1 bison would've been enough to feed a family for months. They did have cooling and air drying as preservation methods.
There's an 'unknown unknowns' problem with how hard their lives might have been, though. While there are places marked by abundance in ancestral time, those areas also show more evidence of pressure from other human groups. Various peoples wouldn't have been moving into inhospitable climes or adopting early labor-intensive agricultural methods if there had been easier choices available. Especially regarding agriculture, archaeological records indicate that human health outcomes declined initially upon its adoption.
Yea for sure. It's super difficult to draw any conclusions from the little we know that are useful for us today.
Agreed. I only point out the relative scarcity of food to help dietary normies understand how not-normal eating (in general) is now. There are lots of layers to this not-normalness, including our food being a lot less fermented (including rotten) than our ancestors would have found enjoyable, or how we do more eating alone, or how many or most seem never to recover from the great flavor restriction that evolution puts on the palate around age four, or how little time we spend now intimately engaged in food preparation.
If you look at the obesity figures, by getting to such a size you are normal.
If you manage to reduce yourself to a bmi less than 30 then you're an outlier.
Haha true story ;)
Thought I might send you an update after almost 3 weeks experimenting with high cream:
Summary: First week was amazing, second week stalled, third week was derailed by activities with my kids. The diet is fully satisfying but really socially awkward.
Middle aged dad with a desk job. Stayed active into my 30s, but responsibilities and joint pain have led to being less and less fit. Started the new year at 210 and 6 feet tall. Back when I was in my best shape, I was around 185, but I have not been below 190 in about 7 years.
I had already discovered that I get less joint pain with a Keto diet (and have tried nearly every variant). Using basic Keto (and a detour into Potato Diet, which was as painful for my joints as you would expect), I got down to 201 in March and was pretty stuck. Joint pain was less but not gone, and weight was stable.
I mixed cream with unsweetened cocoa powder for breakfast and dinner, then beef with vegetables and eggs for lunch. I started with higher protein than you did (about double), assuming that would matter since I have less weight to lose than you do.
After 1 week, my weight was 196 and I had the least amount of joint pain I have had in around 10 years. The pain just turned off. I had been to multiple specialists over the years, and all said that there was nothing that they could do. And 1 week of cream left me feeling amazing, even after coming from a Keto diet.
After the second week, there was no change in weight at all. Still 196, though a noticeable change in waist size from when I was 201 just a two weeks earlier. My next thought is that maybe the protein is still too high for sustained weight loss. I started dialing down the protein.
But then I hit an anniversary, and three end-of-year activity banquets for my kids. I am up to 199 with a plan to try lower protein again. I have not yet figured out how to work with major disruptions. I need to find an equivalent to taking one of the kids out for ice cream or nachos, and things to eat when the supplied meals are all pizza and sandwiches.
Nice, thanks for checking in!
It's absolutely expected that the initial water weight drop only lasts for 5-7 days. The stall after that could be a regular old stall (I've had 14 day stalls on this) or it could be that you lost a little fat but gained a little lean mass. If you hit a stall week, I'd give it another week of just keeping things the same just to double check. You can also go by your waist/pants size: if your weight stalls but your pants get loose, that's a good sign that the scale doesn't catch. Just an idea.
Getting derailed sucks, but it's not a huge deal in the greater scheme of things. I usually have to spend the next 5-10 days getting it back down. Oh well, you'll reach your dream weight 5-10 days later ;)
For the kids meals I don't really have a good strategy, I don't have kids. But do you really think the kids would notice/mind if you don't eat the doritos or ice cream? Just get a coffee or sparkling water to slowly sip while everybody's busy eating doritos.
Since you only really need to eat 2x per day on the diet (and could maybe even do 1x?), you could also schedule around these events. Copious cream in your cocoa for breakfast, buy packaged roast beef from the store over lunch and eat half of it (or whatever fits the protein), toss rest in fridge for later. Fast during the sandwich thing. Make whipped cream when you get home. You should only have to shift your eating schedule a few hours.
PS: Super interesting about your joint pain. I can only wonder what it is. Potatos also made me feel like crap, especially with the skins on. I got rashes, not joint pain. Wonder if what's helping you is low vegetables, low protein...? You could give full carnivore a go, lots of people reporting improvements like that.
Thanks for the reply.
I have tried carnivore, both high fat and high protein. I didn't notice a big difference in terms of joint pain or weight lost compared to a more conventional Keto diet. I just spent more money and more preparation time for about the same result. Cream has been far more effective. Maybe it is connected to how low the protein was? I was around 70g per day the first week, which is higher than you are using, but lower than I had during any of my carnivore attempts.
Potatoes were no worse than any other moderate to high carb diet for joint pain, and I did lose weight.
With regards to family and community events, hopefully I can get my weight low enough that taking a break for a meal every week or two will not be a problem. I just need to make sure that it really is every week or two.
Yea honestly it sounds like you'd still be on a slight down trend. Some of those extra pounds are water so they'll come off quick. If you go down 3lbs a week and back up 2, that's still a win if it keeps happening :)
What's your theory on why Japanese people don't get fat?
I think there is a genetic component to it, they do seem to get diabetic at nearly the same rate. Not quite like Americans, but up there with high western levels. Whereas they're absolutely insanely low-obesity by BMI, not just among rich nations, but overall.
But I could also imagine that they eat very little protein and very little PUFA, both of which seems the case anecdotally and from what (little) I understand of Japanese cuisine. Protein/PUFA are my main hypotheses right now.
There has been a very detailed comparison of Japanese and American diets:
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/3/633
Japanese eat less calories, less fat and vastly more omega 3. Only Japanese men eat significantly less protein than American men, females are about the same.
In regards to PUFA, in a direct test against SFA in humans it has been shown that overfeeding PUFA causes much higher lean mass gains, while overfeeding SFA causes much higher visceral fat accumulation. The paper is below:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260253803_Overfeeding_Polyunsaturated_and_Saturated_Fat_Causes_Distinct_Effects_on_Liver_and_Visceral_Fat_Accumulation_in_Humans
It's pretty devastating to the anti seed oil crowd.
That first paper seems to show that American women eat 150% the LA+ARA compared to Japanese women, and for men it's 210%? Americans also eat more SFA, but the difference is the largest in LA+ARA.
Calories is a tautology, it doesn't answer the "why" or "how" questions.
The second study isn't devastating to the seed oil crowd, it's a joke :) I'm only a few pages in and it's already done everything wrong. It doesn't disprove anything.
1) They recruited lean people. People who are naturally lean obviously won't have the susceptibility to PUFAs if that is a thing.
2) They chose palm oil, which is over 9% Linoleic Acid and therefore would cause the exact issues the seed oil people are complaining about, lol. Palm oil is more unsaturated than it is saturated (if by a very thin margin).
To test this for real, what they'd need to do is:
1) Take obese people
2) Put them on a near-0 (as best as possible) baseline
3) Do they lose weight?
4) Put half of them back on a normal/high PUFA diet
5) Did they gain the weight back?
In saying all that, cream is awesome!
For your point 1) about how they should use obese people instead of lean, I find it difficult to get my head around it. It's much easier for obese people to improve their body composition than people that are already lean, so the results are stronger by showing up in lean people.
For your point 2) you are saying that both diets have too much PUFA. Calculating the figures I see the high PUFA group gets 12.9% of their calories from PUFA while the low PUFA group gets 4.5%. I'm not going to get into an argument about what level of PUFA is considered unholy ('this guy had some PUFA in pork he ate 4 years ago so all results are meaningless" etc.). as people are making up numbers without any scientific basis but do you not think it's incredible that much higher PUFA intake caused a much better lean mass to fat gain when overeating? It's the exact opposite of what the anti-seed oilers are saying! And it's in hard human trial data, not some animal study, or worse, some mechanical speculation.
I will be scoffing down walnuts on my next bulk to get the lean gains.
1) Yes, it is easier for obese people to improve body composition than for lean people. But testing the lean people doesn't prove/disprove the point. It's as if you argued that we should test car repair kits on functioning cars instead of broken cars. It's not going to prove the point either way. What do we expect the tools to do, supercharge the car?
2) I can't explain the effect, but it's also not strong. 3lbs gained in 7 weeks might as well be statistical noise from a DEXA. I had much bigger lean mass gain than that in 4 weeks myself. For all we know the PUFA group might've gotten inflammation, and retained more water to fight it, which counts as lean mass. Total speculation, but the study just doesn't show a strong effect. Plus they tested this with 45% carb muffins, so at the very least we'd have to assume that PUFA/SFA in combination with high carbs and sugar does this.
For the record, I'm not 100% on PUFA did obesity. But it does fit the data better than any other hypothesis I can find IF you assume a very low threshold. Common number I see is 5g PUFA per 1,000kcal, i.e. basically trace amounts. One spoon of commercial salad dressing per day would easily be enough.
Is that very low threshold amount true, or are people wrong? I don't know. But this study doesn't disprove it, either.
Not an expert on Japanese cuisine either but seems like they eat a fair amount of protein largely from Fish and Pork.
Quick google seems to support that it's a fair amount, not the highest but certainly not low. (Especially if you were to measure g/kg of bodyweight)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-protein-supply?tab=chart&country=~JPN
Might be interesting to look into how they raise their pork, potentially less linoleic acid ?
I've also heard it speculated that omega-3 are protective against linoleic acid consumption.
I've definitely heard that as well. Better omega-3/6 ration could be it. But I don't really know, tbh.