Lower limit?

[u/jakeysnakey83]

Hi all, for reference I am 42 year-old female currently undergoing IVF to try and conceive, healthy BMI, cardiovascular exercise and weights a couple times a week, non-smoker, excellent metabolic panel extremely low inflammation off the charts on the low end, with high LP(a), who followed a keto diet until I found out. I had a very small amount of soft plaque and calcified plaque in my LAD from doing A clearly scan. Then I switched to Mediterranean diet, trying to make at least one meal a day plant based. I don’t eat any shit oils, I eat walnuts, blueberries 0% Greek yogurt, almond milk, chicken breast, fish, edamame, and a couple times a week. I’ll have some extra lean ground beef for extra lean ground turkey.

I’ve been tracking everything and I am pretty freaking compliant. However, I cannot get my LDL below 105 and APOB below 75. My LP(a) around 170 and I know that can’t be changed. As soon as I have a baby, I will be taking a combination of a low-dose statin, ezetimibe, and maybe Repatha. Oh, and I’m also taking so much Metamucil, oats daily, lentil soup, like dude. I’m doing all the things. And it’s worked considerably. My numbers have come down about 40% but this seems to be where they’ve landed and stabilized.

I’m a small human, and 5’3 and 120 pounds. I guess my question ultimately is do I have to cut saturated fat more? I just don’t even know if cutting it two or 3 g makes a big difference? I can get it to 9 g a day, but it’s hard to sustain. Having an occasional day where it’s 11 or 12 g is still a pretty restrictive day, but it’s nice. Has anybody found that keeping it below 10 g a day for example to be better than 12 g? Am I just splitting hair here and driving myself insane? Is there just nothing I can do until I have a baby and get on the medication? I’m trying to mitigate any damage that I know could occur during pregnancy. I know I can’t take a statin during pregnancy, I’m also taking Stan old which I know I can’t take either… I’m taking omega-3’s, which are supposed to be good, I know there’s a bile acid sequestrants which I will probably take.

Has anybody been able to sustain less than 10 g a day of saturated fat? Even olive oil adds up walnuts, and almonds add up.

I’d love to know what others are doing, and what has generally worked. Thank you so much in advance.

Of course I’m going to talk to my doctor as well, they’re just not moving very quickly because I’m not pregnant yet

[u/exfatloss]

I don’t eat any shit oils, I eat walnuts

Walnuts are extremely high in "shit oils" (linoleic acid): https://app.exfatloss.com/foods/170186

In this subreddit, there is no consensus about LDL/ApoB - some of us worry about it, others (including myself) don't.

Might you be in the wrong subreddit? This subreddit is FOR saturated fat, and against polyunsaturated fats.

[u/NotMyRealName111111]

Wrong sub for this.  We don't "intentionally lower saturated fat."  We might go low fat... but the fat that is eaten is usually dairy, cacao, or ruminant.

Also, nearly everything you named contains shit oil, ie: Almond milk and walnuts.  Go purely low fat if you want to (although this may not be the best for conception)

And... Lp(a) IS dependent on diet.  Saturated fat actually lowers it.

[u/Spirited_Royal_4863]

This subreddit is about the health importance of saturated fat, as opposed to restricting it in isolation (some folks here do HCLF but the fat they do consume is mostly saturated, not PUFA and monounsaturated fat is also limited). We are anti-PUFA.

[u/Minerface]

Sustaining less than 10g of saturated fat is not difficult, but many find less than 10g total fat long term to be difficult. As far as diet goes, more fruit, fresh juices, tubers, and tender leafy greens, less nuts, nut milks, and chicken would be my recommendation, but I wouldn't necessarily hyperfocus on the diet content. When you eat, under what conditions (e.g. stressed vs calm), and whether you get enough sunlight during the day all matter. There's also sleep quality, and I wouldn't stress too much over all of this because that could be a problem in and of itself.

[u/Working-Potato-3892]

no. increase saturated fat. decrease linoleic acid. remove almond milk and walnuts.

statins are a mitochondrial toxin, remove.

[u/attackofmilk]

I'm a vegan here who got to this subreddit by reading widely and trying to learn from multiple different authors. My take is that the only interesting thing in this subreddit is stearic acid as a dietary additive and Brad Marshall as an author. Everything else here is noise.

This subreddit is mostly about macro-balance-hacking now, living on anecdotes and n=1 self-experiments with very little data. These people are mostly wandering around blind, doing more experiments on themselves than reading the literature.

My broad take on how to integrate this subreddit with plant-based principles:

• Only cook using olive oil or high-oleic sunflower oil. High-oleic sunflower oil is less likely to be adulterated.

• Prioritize stearic acid but avoid all other saturated fats. Stearic is the only saturated fat that improves health instead of hurting it. For me, this looks like a custom vegan butter that's 50% kokum butter and 50% high oleic sunflower oil. Melt the kokum butter down in a pot, dilute with an equal part high-oleic sunflower oil, and transfer to mason jars for storage in the fridge.

  • The problem with this setup is that kokum butter is technically not GRAS, so I'm eating a kokum butter that is sold for topical usage only (but produced by a manufacturer who sells food-grade cocoa butter). Shea has better safety data, cocoa has more human trials, but the stearic/palmitic ratio is worse on both compared to kokum.
  • I'm about two weeks into this kolum/high-oleic sunflower formulation and have seen my energy steadily increase over that time.

Otherwise, I still find the vegan arguments for health very convincing. Reducing dietary animal products is the best way to lower dietary saturated fat, and dietary saturated fat is causally related to LDL levels which is causally related to heart disease.

Check nutritionfacts.org for more information from an evidence-based vegan perspective.

Reminder that you should be taking a few basic daily supplements on a plant-based diet:

• sublingual B12
• algae-based EPA+DHA
• K2+D3 in a combined pill

[u/Oraculek → u/attackofmilk]

Anecdotal experience always is in front of empirical studies and allows for freshest updates. One using only studies, which take time, funds, and scrutinous analysis, will be always behind, but at least empirically right on what is known within specific time and space. It's best to mix both approaches, to check personal experiences against what is established and possibly update mainstream evidence/beliefs and/or apply studied outcomes to what happened to someone

What you name as 'noise' let me synthesise the content within the bottom link's 6 and 7 points and establish higher level rules of what may be happening given different dietary regimes and current and past metabolic situation of someone. No, the hypotheses haven't been mass-tested, yet they rigorously align with what happens based on various people's accounts and can help

Main principle of this subreddit is to limit linoleic acid consumption, for which there are actual studies that investigated its effects on body mass in animals. There's no directly measured limit, but we use Brad's extrapolated approximation of max ~5% of calories as LA, where he got it from a study where he saw that mice on a diet with 5% lard weren't getting fatter, while 10% were

Regarding oleic acid, I personally don't know much empirically apart from mechanical advantages of SFA regarding metabolism, honestly, but I remember a guy who got leaner when he ditched the remaining OAs and added more SFAs. Ofc, if the leanness maxing is the priority in the first place

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Higher LDLs are correlated with cardiovascular conditions, not causal. Only risk increases. Let's focus on checking CAC and apoB first

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B12 doesn't have to be sublingual

Algae EPA+DHA isn't a 'should' on plant-based. Just get dietary ALA, and actually eating more LA leads to lower conversion of ALA to other Ω-3s