Fire in a Bottle II, lipedema, adipaging, twinkie-fat

hyperlipid
fire-in-a-bottle
ros-is-the-signal
lipedema
the-croissant-diet

(Betsy) #81

I am reading Hans’ article about glucose metabolism. Gsk-3b interference of glycogen synthase and then the antagonists of gsk-3b brought to mind that glp-1 might be involved. Glp-1 agonists are also being investigated for being used for meds for diabetes T2.

The interesting thing about that, though, is that the enzyme that digests gluten (and casein) DPPV, is a glp-1 antagonist. So I could see how for some people, me included, who have found keto helpful might not find the croissant diet helpful. Although, at least from this angle, I don’t know who why some people can get away with adding in the starch and not others. Unless there is something that needs to be healed with respect to glp-1, too.

" Consistently, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and exendin-4 (EX-4) have been shown to promote mitochondrial biogenesis and the expression of anti-oxidants through upregulation of PGC-1α activity and down-regulation of GSK-3β activity in advanced glycation end products (AGEs)-induced AD. Further, immunoprecipitation assays show that PGC-1α may physically bind to GSK-3β, which is inactivated by phosphorylation at Ser9 induced by GLP-1/Ex-4 in vivo and in vitro . However, deficiency of GLP-1/Ex-4 impairs the association between PGC-1α and GSK-3β [17]."


(Betsy) #82

And if anyone doesn’t want to take berberine because of its effect on gut microbiota, gentian and bupleurum may accomplish something very similar with respect to the pancreas without killing good bacteria.


(PJ) #83

My source of 90% stearic is from the fireinabottle.net website. It is basically a hard wax that is flaked into a powder. I dump about 2 heaping Tbsp into my kefir-fruit-smoothie in my Ninja and blend for a bit on the highest speed. It is fairly emulsified.

I realized the other day I had been utterly failing on my supplement regime. Not only the specialty stuff but even some of the basic stuff. How bizarre that my psychology is willing to space that out.

My protein keeps dropping too low as well. Might be my high weight or that I was body-atrophied from being bedridden when so sick so long, but my body in meditations tells me it still wants a lot of full spectrum protein and it wants some right before sleep as well (strange, but whatever).

The starch & stearic approach is making it harder for me to get enough protein. It’s hard enough to eat what for me would be ideally ~120g++/day of animal protein even using 2 protein drinks plus food. But remove one of those big meal-meals because I’m having a kefir/fruit smoothie with stearic instead (there is only so much one can eat!), and now I get a lot more fat… but 40g less protein. Plus I am freaking full so it’s a miracle if I can even stuff the other meat meal down my throat.

Now, some people would say this was great, you’re eating less, but I am more than capable of eating less by simply eating less, either in a hard keto or a fasting entirely. My goal here is not to eat less, it is merely to shift the ratio/% of fat types in my adipose cells. I’m trying to rebuild my body still, not break it down. SFA works well for making and keeping me full.

I’m sure this is just a lack of my arranging it better and more experience will resolve this.

I have less energy without several supps + sufficient protein. Menopause, whatever who knows, but then I don’t have the energy to really care anymore. Usually eventually I realize my life is going to hell because I’m barely moving, then I think about my food/supps, then I realize I have messed up again. It’s like the frog with the gradually boiling water, I don’t realize it’s happening until the consequences get dire.


(Bob M) #84

I definitely have an issue with gluten. However, when I was trying the croissant diet, I mainly used things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, even spaghetti squash. So, gluten wasn’t an issue.

I did actually make and eat croissants, but that was a test to see if I could make them They turned out great, but take a long time to make.

This is from my Omega Quant test (tests fatty acids in blood) in November 2020 after eating a ton of saturated fat for a long time:

I’m in the 97% percentile for saturated fat in the blood. That indicates to me that I have plenty of saturated fat in my blood. It’s unclear how much of that is in my fat cells, of course.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t tried the croissant diet. I lose weight so slowly, that I STILL cannot fit into shorts I wore over 2 years ago. And I had thrown away all my larger shorts. I may have to go buy larger shorts.


(PJ) #85

Hi, You can calculate your desaturase index by dividing your Oleic(18:1n9) by your Stearic(18:0). What is the Oleic number on your blood test? It’s not in the screenshot you posted. PJ


(Betsy) #86

That’s a shame, while it does work for some people, it doesn’t seem to work for everyone. I don’t know why, but I would like to know why.

Do you know what your body temperature is? Mine fluctuates between 96.7 and 97.8.

Have you read at the site that RightNOW linked, men-elite.com? Hans has a lot of good information.


(Edith) #87

I totally get this. I think our brains get fatigued after a while always thinking, “I need to obsess about this and add that and think about this other thing.” I get what I call “self control fatigue,” and then I start to let things go.


(Bob M) #88

Oleic/Stearic (DI18) = 1.67

DI16 = 3.4

My desaturate index is near “lean” “Nathan”:

Though I am nowhere near “lean”.

@betsy2 My body temperature (using non-contact thermometer) is 97.5 basically. I also bought an under-the-tongue sensor, but I found you really have to take that for a long time. As in a minute or more. The temperature was about the same, though sometimes higher. It was inconsistent, though since I took it to work (the non-contact is at home), I could test more. It could be there is a difference over the day.

I was taking berberine and his oil, but I developed some intense arrhythmias. I could not determine whether these were part of the problem, although I did note more arrhythmia when taking berberine (which I took before I got the oil). I stopped taking these, and the arrhythmias have calmed down/gone (almost) away. But I can’t prove it was berberine, as I also made many other changes.

While the research I did showed berberine has some effect and appears safe, I’ve been low carb/keto for 7.5 years. My blood sugar is completely flat (verified by CGM), except higher blood sugar in the morning. The research done on berberine seems to be done with diabetics or people eating high carb. I’m not sure I’m a good candidate for this, as I already have relatively low blood sugar all day long. I can’t find any studies on people eating low carb for years AND taking berberine.

Here’s an example of my blood sugar. The higher values on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and the weekend are probably due to exercise (in the morning on weekdays, morning Saturday, working on house all day), which causes my blood sugar to go up.

An average over this time:

While I think the information Brad produces is very interesting, I’m not sure that it’s better than keto/low carb/carnivore. Based on my experience, it was bad, though I did learn a lot. I learned, for instance, that I could be totally not hungry AT ALL. But I could still eat a normal meal, meaning there’s something wrong with my feedback system that tells me I’m full.

I also theorize this is why you see people saying they have to eat less than what it takes to get full: it’s at least partly hormonal.

I also realize that the whole theory that PUFAs are the indispensable element for obesity are probably wrong. For instance, I got fat drinking good beer, eating pizza, then ice cream. From the data I can gather, that’s a low PUFA, high sugar diet. That theoretically should not make me fat, if PUFAs are necessary, but it did. (This is also one theory I saw from another person who gained 20+ pounds on the croissant diet: he said he got fat eating saturated fat, so his theory was that if you did so, the croissant diet could not work.)


(Betsy) #89

You are excellent at keeping track of data, I wish I was able to do that.

The theory worked for Brad, so he didn’t need to dig any deeper. I wish someone would. RightNOW, how does your body temperature run?

My body temperature is low, too, and I am going to focus on working on it from that angle. I don’t think switching body fat from PUFA to SAT deals with that problem, even it PUFA initially caused the problem (I am not suggesting that it was the cause, only that it may have, as I have read some people suggest)

That’s the good thing about men-elite.com, his information is more whole body.

(Edited the link to correct it)


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #90

My take on that is that high insulin is one of the main direct contributors to obesity. I suspect, from what I’ve read, that the effect of polyunsaturates is to promote inflammation, not obesity directly. My guess would be that the inflammation can in turn cause insulin resistance, which could eventually lead to obesity, but that chain of effects is longer. Excessive glucose intake leads to obesity much more directly. At least this is how I suspect our understanding will eventually turn out.

I started out ignoring the effect of the fat content of the American diet, because the lectures I watched five years ago were by doctors Lustig, Attia, and Phinney, and they were all focussing on sugar at the time. But people like Tucker Goodrich and Dr. Knobbe make a persuasive case for polyunsaturates’ being part of the problem. The difficulty is that the sugar industry and the seed oil industry got their start at pretty much the same time, at least in the American food market, so it is difficult to tease out their separate contributions to our ill health.


(Bob M) #91

@betsy2 Brad’s idea MIGHT have worked for me, too, were I single or not in a pandemic. What he would do is eat a ton of saturated fat and “starch”, then not eat for 1+ days. When I had a ton of saturated fat, that could have worked. I would, however, eat that at “lunch” (my first meal of day), but then due to the pandemic, the family was at home for dinner. If it were a normal school year, I could go pick one of them up at say 7:30 pm or so, then ignore dinner. I would have likely done that.

Since they were home for dinner, I thought instead I’d have just a smidge of dinner. I’d take a small amount, eat some. Get hungry, eat more. Continue until I basically ate an entire meal.

I just tested my temperature, 97.7 using a non-contact thermometer.

That one thing I don’t do is count calories. That would help, but I think it would be…difficult. I was making my own Ghee, for instance, then adding it to starch. I would add the stearic acid to the Ghee. I would make the starch, then add the ghee to it until it no longer soaked up the ghee. That could be tough to track. A lot of stuff would have to be weighed.

@PaulL I agree – it’s difficult to disambiguate PUFAs from sugar. In my case, though, I was following a Pritikin diet (very low fat, 10% by cals/day). I’d get depressed, then go into a mode when I drank a ton of good beer, eat pizza (ordered from a local pizza place), and then eat ice cream. I remember at the time loving a “greek” pizza or similar. So, I THINK that was low PUFA, though it’s hard to tell. I’d come out of it, and flip back to Pritikin. (And I actually did count things on Pritikin, just to ensure I got <10% fat/day, though of course after a while of binging, I stopped that too.)

And looking back on what my family ate, way back when, I remember them eating starch (perogies, cabbage) and butter (have to fry perogies in butter). But I didn’t know what a PUFA was back then. In fact, it wasn’t until multiple years into keto that I knew what a PUFA was. They could have had high PUFA, too.

About 3-4 years ago, I tried Jimmy Moore’s idea (at the time) of concentrating on eating fat. I found that this was not filling for me – it seemed as if I could eat a lot of fat. But I didn’t know anything about “fat” at the time, so I’m sure there were some PUFAs getting in there.

And most processed food is a combination of PUFA and carbs. Heck, my wife took a charcuterie plate to a birthday. She bought some olives from the store (in a plastic container) for this. I of course ate a lot of those. When I got home, I checked the container…only to realize they were in sunflower oil. Ugh. And I’ve seen foods advertised as “keto” at Costco that have a lot of high-PUFA oils in them. Double Ugh. Can’t get away from those unless you read labels or prepare everything yourself.


(PJ) #92

When I’ve done keto or lowcarb, the one thing I can fairly say is that I do whatever I’m doing decently. What I’m doing varies, I cycled off on holidays, and once I’d got a couple hundred pounds down and was not losing more I felt it was better to take a break for awhile anyway if I could maintain. But I don’t generally have an issue with discipline.

That… was lowcarb. I am confused and embarrassed that I seem to be doing this FIOB diet so badly.

First I keep literally forgetting to add stearic to my kefir-fruit smoothies. Now this sounds silly but it’s so chronic I think my subconscious is doing this and I don’t understand why.

Second aside from that, and the incredibly rare waffle (I don’t consider that food so tend to avoid it), I’m just not eating the diet.

I’m eating the “kefir-fruit smoothie, tacos and chili con carne diet” and sadly, occasionally, also the “and whatever carbs are in front of me that don’t have gluten diet.”

Am I driven to eat carbs because I’m having so many in the smoothies (and a few corn tortillas)?

Is it because I seem to have less energy than I normally do (which is screwing up my personal life)?

Why does “no set limit on carbs” translate to “unlimited” and how stupid is that?

I used to explain keto to people in a way that basically said look it doesn’t matter what people say about ‘moderation’ because if you can’t stay on a diet it can’t help you. Keto once you’re in ketosis solidly will kill the sugar cravings most people have. It did mine.

I am not weighing myself because I’m having so much trouble with consistency in carb amounts and sometimes forgetting a dose of my daily diuretics, and my water weight varies a lot. But I swear I am gaining weight. The entire lower half of my body feels larger and I think it’s mostly water from the carbs but it’s still weight, it still feels bad, and it still gives some part of me a small panic attack.

But I can’t even say that I am giving the diet a fair try. It’s not that the diet isn’t working for me. It’s that I can’t freaking be ON it. The list of foods I have that are ideal for it is so short. The list of supplements I should take – not the gigantic list I posted previously, just the half dozen things specific to the diet that should be taken through the day – is obnoxious.

I really want to do this, I’m just so embarrassed I’m doing so badly at it.

And I don’t have infinite time. I’m in menopause, my energy is already tanking despite my supplements, losing any more weight is already likely to be ridiculously tough, and gaining it now is a nightmare.

So I’m going to legit give this another three weeks of try – to the end of August. Whatever good it might or might not do me, it’s going to have to do me within that time.

PJ


(Anthony) #93

Sorry to hear about your troubles. You’ve got
several uphill battles you’re fighting there.

I get the impression from people who have had poor results with this that they tend to have problems with over eating on this. It opens up a lot of “new” previously off limits food to someone coming from a keto/carnivore WOE that I think we tend to feel like we’re just not on a “diet” (or at least not a structured one) and get lax about what/how much we’re eating while ignoring what we’ve learned about ourselves in the past.

That said I suspect this diet has limited ability to help someone lose weight unless they’re coming from a SAD, where pretty much any change will be positive and effectual. I do think it has potential as a maintenance diet (what I’m using it for) and possibly (hopefully) eventually take the last 15-20 off. For someone with a significant amount of weight to lose i think keto/carnivore with PUFA elimination would be hard to beat.

I imagine this would be determined by how thoroughly “broken” and how far off of normal your metabolism is.

I know that through doing this myself I noticed that after eliminating PUFAS for about a week and a half my hunger ramps up noticably, it’s at this point I have to pay attention to carb creep–frequency and amount. I eat 1-2 smallish carnivore type meals and then one croissant diet meal usually for dinner. Multiple croissant diet meals per day starts adding weight.


(PJ) #94

Yeah, I am not eating enough (a long term problem unrelated to this plan). But I am eating too much in carbs in what I’m eating (mostly added to kefir and occasionally crap because yeah, no set rule seems like no rules to my lizard brain).

While still managing to get not enough protein. And seldom getting the stearic in. Which means not the supps either as they are “for” the stearic. I think it made me full for a couple weeks and not after that so my body lost interest in ingesting it.

I’ve been super low pufa except occasional (not constant at all) mayo and pork, for many years. That’s probably why my ratio is 1.5 instead of >2. Still I’d like it to be lower, but I can do that without trying to force the starch and stearic… maybe. Maybe I should do the related supps regardless.

I have really greatly appreciated opening up my menu to more produce, and corn tortillas. I tend to have far too limited a diet and just ‘eat meat’ and often cheese. Allowing more carbs for the tortillas and not worrying about any carbs in produce means I eat a lot more tacos (chicken or beef), often street tacos (peppers and onions and guac, no cheese), more stir fry with a whole variety of veggies, and honestly my body feels really happy about it. I don’t think lowcarb but not ketogenic is a bad idea if a person can do it.

Due to the carbs mostly, and the effect of “food that isn’t mostly protein” displacing that which is, I’ve managed to have no energy, no strength, and get larger anyway.

This is not the fault of the FIOB approach. I think Brad is legit onto something with it. I think it’s important.

In the future if there are more foods/meals discovered or created which actually use the stearic, that would be helpful I suspect.

I just seem to suck at doing it. I have limited funds and some existing food so I’m going to go through the rest of what I have for a week and then I’m going to try a variant that the FIOB basically led me to – lowish carb but not ketogenic – but definitely without the high sugar elements like the milk and water kefir drinks.

That mostly just means lowcarb except with corn tortillas and not counting carbs in veg produce, because the foods I naturally like are lowcarb. They have to be because I have to eat mostly meat if I’m going to get enough protein, to have enough energy to function with. Generally there’s about a 7-10 day curve and it’s cumulative over that period, whatever I’m doing for protein, and how much motion is in my day will reflect that.

Nearly all my improper carbs have been in drinks of one kind or another, not food. But anything in my gut fills me and tends to reduce my ‘real’ eating. So no matter what I call the diet I’m on, that’s going to have to stop. The carbs make me carry more water.

I was not losing any more weight at all on lowcarb. I think sometimes the body legit needs a break and hell I’d lost a LOT of weight until then. So “if what you’re doing isn’t working, do something else.” The FIOB path was “something else.” Maybe not the ideal solution for me personally but still, it was something-else.

I want to fast, I love fasting, and it’s embarrassingly easy for me even pretty long term. I’ve had 30 years of meditation work that makes me pretty close to my body though and she says “I would ALWAYS choose for you to eat.” I’m still recovering from decades of profound malnourishment I guess. So trying to find a way to lose more fat; but not lose more hair; but not fast; but lowcarb was no longer effective; but I’m in menopause; – well you see how this becomes a gordion knot of black box who the hell knows what the right thing to do is.

I’ll continue on. I had a brief but stopped kettlebell adventure long ago I’m going to resume again, since it’s too hot to go walking anymore.

PJ


(PJ) #95

Since apparently both my brain cells lack the discipline for this dietary strategy – my knee-jerk resistance to starch in almost any form, a lack of meal plans that involve the primary (stearic) ingredient I’m supposed to be ingesting, a tendency to eat high-carb items once in awhile if I don’t have a set carb limit – I am shifting my eating plan starting this Sunday.

I’m planning to do what I consider something of a maintenance plan for now even though I do want to lose fat and I do want to reduce PUFA in my tissues. But I also do want to start some serious exercise.

It is lowcarb with three exceptions (which means it is not ketogenic – most days, anyway, it will be sometimes by accident): some beans; some corn tortillas; and non-fruit, non-starch produce (mostly what works well in chili, tacos, or stir-fry). I hope having plenty of these will keep the gut-biome happier.

I’ve worked hard on kefir (both water and milk) during this time, mostly needing lots of carbs to ingest them, but I do believe they help. With fiber like beans and peppers, it certainly improves my overall digestive output. I’ve put the kefirs into storage for a few months. I am usually off lowcarb from 11/21 (my dad’s birthday or Thanksgiving whichever comes first) until day after Christmas (and then often fast 12/26 to morning of 1/2) so I will resume kefir then.

Usually I’m obsessive about tracking, but this time I’m going to try not tracking anything except making sure, as a generality I can fathom from common foods and well known counts, is loosely >150g+ pro and ~<80g ecc. The only fats I will be adding though is the coconut oil I cook in, a little grassfed butter in chili now and then, my O3 supps, and maybe tiny cocoa butter + cocoa molded things to drop in coffee (rarely). I hope it won’t end up low calorie.

My plan is to focus on exercise, and see if maybe restoring some LBM eventually will have some effect on metabolism. Either way I need to focus on fully restoring my body as a primary… the last couple months were pretty great for my gut, muscles next.

But as influenced by my interest in this topic and eating plan, I think I might sometimes take some of the supplements I got for it. And I’m still hoping, around end of year, to take another of the Omega Quant blood tests out of curiosity.

As for the results of doing this REALLY BADLY (so it’s pretty unfair for me to represent it):

I was around 349 (a bit higher than I’d been prior) when I added carbs to my diet so that whenever I began the starch and stearic approach, if I gained weight, I wanted to know it was from that, not simply from the adding of carbs. The heavier I am, the more water weight I carry (at one point about 42#, now usually about 22# or so).

After a few weeks eating carbs, I was 371.5 which is what I expected for the water weight.

I shifted to S&S on 6/22. I did it well for 2 weeks, then varied between “badly” and “not at all” for the next 7 weeks.

Current weight: 370.5. So I did not gain anything. I had periods where my water weight was higher (I could feel the body results) but it seems to have been one of the half-dozen things that make my water weight vary quite a bit.

Sunday I shift, and so after a couple of weeks I will weigh again. My water weight should drop probably about half of it, some will remain because I won’t be ketogenic more than briefly/occasionally. Plus I will be adding some inflammation from exercise stress.

I will say this: prior, in my life since 2004, any time I have shifted to eating carbs, even not a lot, I have gained weight at the speed of light. One time I had a graph of my time on lowcarb and off lowcarb for about 10 years, and seriously it looked like a mountain range. Straight diagonals up and down. Eating carbs was a nightmare for me.

I think really long term low carb, and possibly that I’ve gone off it for holidays and back on again regularly for years, has just created a vastly better insulin handling in my body.

Eating a lot of carbs for seven weeks has reduced that a little though. I’m starting to get a degree of blood sugar drops I did not initially, either from high carbs or from a big meal, and haven’t had that in eons.

That however is my issue, not one of the eating plan. I could have done it on keto if I wanted to. Anybody could. So I don’t think it would be fair to say the diet makes you gain weight so much as, some people if they choose to do the diet to include starch – which is obviously a big focus of Brad’s, but he says in multiple places, not required – that doesn’t work for everyone.

My new approach starting Sunday will continue the avoidance of PUFA – pork and mayo and any chicken except breasts. Those were the only things that had much of it in my diet anyway and I didn’t eat those commonly. I might allow myself a little bacon twice a year or something like junk food is all.

This really won’t change my diet much from what it is right now, except that it will increase my food and specifically protein intake, and reduce my carb and sugar intake.

But there will be zero starch involved. And aside from bits of cocoa butter things in coffee I probably won’t be intaking stearic.

PJ