So, the problem with anything epidemiological, which is what Michael gave by the Speth article, is you can’t determine WHY they did what they did. Merely saying that people did not eat lean animals in the Spring does not prove that it’s the leanness that’s bad.
For instance, I could argue that this is what we WANT, since we’re trying to lose weight:
Don’t we want our appetite to decrease? Isn’t that the point?
But I tried to find some research about what happens if you eat a lot of protein daily, as to fasting (12 hours, morning) insulin level. When I was fasting (multi-day, 36 hour, etc.) a ton, my 12-hour fasting insulin was low, below 5. Eating now, my 12-hour fasting is between 8-10 normally.
I can find no study examining how the amount of protein you eat during the day affects your 12-hour fasting insulin level. Without a home insulin meter, and some careful diet design, this won’t be known.
That is, maybe high daily protein intake is “bad” because of the increased insulin? There’s no way to test this, though.
And let’s assume protein decreases ketones. Do I really want to add fat to “chase” high ketones? If I knew the exact amount of fat to eat to cause my body to burn fat, that would be ideal. But there’s nothing telling me this level.
And what happens for someone like me, 7+ years into this? When I used to fast 4.5 days, my ketones would be very high (4, 5+ mmol/l) the final day of fasting. The last time I did this, last year, my ketones ended up being less than 2, and that’s after 4.5 days fasting.
Anyway, I think I need to design some diets to test. A diet that puts me squarely in the high P:E, “You are about to DIE because of the amount of protein and lack of fat you’re eating!”, camp. Then keep adding fat over time.
The problem: there are no good metrics to measure success. Fasting insulin could help, but how many times can you get this? Twice? Seems like too small to know what’s going on.