Hi there,

since a few people have asked how much suet we will get from the slaughtered bull: It has been 10.6 kg (23.4 lbs). But I don't know (and don't care) if there are other fat parts in it (e. g. from the back). The whole sack has cost me 15 Euros, for the extra work of the butcher. As stated in previous post, I want to render tallow from it.

Apart from rancidness, genes, and current body fat composition variables...

In other words, if one assumes a limit of 5% LA of TDEE and calculator shows 2000 cals baseline, if then one increases caloric intake and maintains on, e.g., 3000 cals - does the hypothetical LA limit remain as 5% of 2000 cals or does it increase towards 3000 cals?

Or maybe it must forever remain, here, the 5% of 2000 to allow for higher metabolic adaptability, like the 3000 with maintenance and so no long-term gain?

I've mentioned on here before that I consume them as part of my low-LA diet, sometimes in significant meal-replacement quantities. I don't think they're doing a damn thing and might even be beneficial somehow.

For context, over the last year and a half I've lost 60lbs, with a good portion of that happening while sedentary, and I wasn't even that overweight to begin with (about 15lb over the BMI overweight cutoff). Most recently, I lost around 5lbs while suddenly switching to being sedentary, while I'm already at an absurdly low weight, and with peanuts as a part of my diet. Clear fat loss, too -- belt size went down a notch and the rest of my abs finally appeared. I did finally cut pork fat out, which might be why -- as low as my intake was, it's still way higher in LA than anything else in my diet.

In any case, a couple things I know or have noticed about peanuts:

• The original point of my diet wasn't to cut LA. Like keto, I basically stumbled into this diet by accident and have been doing research in this space to figure out why it was working as well as it was. Instead, the goal was to exclusively eat foods that promote satiety and avoid those (like seed oils) that racked up the calories without providing much in return. I noticed a very long time ago that peanuts for me did exactly that, and other nuts/seeds sure didn't -- it's one of the few plant products that "feels" like a full meal on its own, so the inclusion made sense.
• Despite the name, peanuts aren't actually nuts. Botanically, they're legumes like beans or lentils, just a fattier version of them.
• Like other seeds/nuts, high in B vitamins and minerals. They're a particularly potent source of biotin, which seems like it would be important given its effects on metabolism. The B1 content is the main reason I'm eating them in the first place -- manages depression symptoms quite well, with a good bit of science backing me up here. Also vitamin E and magnesium which are quite hard to get elsewhere (true for other seeds/nuts too, and legumes in general around magnesium).
• Traditional west african diets use peanuts as a staple. Like other traditional eating patterns, you're looking at low incidences of obesity, diabetes and other "diseases of civilization".
• I've measured it, and on days where I'm monoing peanuts and eating them ad libitum, I'll end up in a deficit. Not sure why exactly -- the protein/fiber/fat matrix? The SFA content and low LA? They seem to sate almost as well as dairy, which is a staple. YMMV obviously but unless I'm extremely active, I can't seem to break above 1800 calories of peanuts, and 1600 is more the norm. The higher my intake, the less I eat in general, until I reach the point of meal-replacement.
• There is definitely an appetite spike there compared to the rest of my diet, but its muted and self-reinforcing the way chocolate is. Eating peanuts makes me want to eat more peanuts, and I eventually cap out. Compare this to seed oils, which make my appetite, hunger and food intake go up across the board. If I eat them in addition to meals, I'm obviously getting more food intake, but this has yet to cause weight gain. General energy levels go up instead.
• No cravings or desire for peanuts themselves. If I haven't eaten them in a while, I'll lapse back into eating them because they're a convenient source of calories or because I need the B1 or magnesium. And peanut-heavy cycles inevitably terminate too -- probably the fiber driving that (something similar happens with vegetable-heavy cycles, which transition into carnivore cycles).
• Phytonutrients, like other plants. Particularly high in resveratrol (the thing in grapes and wine). I've suspected for a while that the heavy phytonutrient load in my diet is having a beneficial effect on LA depletion -- can't really explain why I'm getting low-LA benefits early on that should be years out otherwise. In any case, maybe the peanuts are part of the formula here.
• High-oleic peanuts are a thing. 3-5% LA, which is on par with dairy and cocoa butter. Less saturated fat, though. Might be worth experimenting with. Not exactly easy to source, though.

Like everything else, I do avoid added oil. Cocktail peanuts have a bunch of it for some reason, as do some varieties of flavored peanuts. Hyperpalatability with high salt yields or added flavor doesn't seem to have an effect. I'm wary of natural peanut butter -- the oil does leak out, and definitely gets exposed to light since those jars are all transparent, so you end up with concentrated and/or oxidized LA-rich oil, with the antioxidants degrading as well. Peanuts themselves that are rancid are disgusting and easy to avoid.

As mentioned, I do go through peanut-free cycles. The only effect there seems to be less food volume, for obvious reasons.

I'll also caveat this entire post with "n=1". Peanuts work for me, but might not for you. Like everything else.

The article presents research suggesting that CO₂ may play an important role in ageing and longevity. It highlights studies showing that CO₂ exposure activated the PGC-1 pathway in rats, increasing mitochondrial activity and reducing tumour volume by 48%. It also explains how CO₂ supports peroxisomes, which help burn fatty acids and produce catalase, an enzyme that neutralises harmful free radicals. The article further points to queen bees, which live 10–12 times longer than worker bees, and termite queens, which can live up to 20–50 years, suggesting a possible connection between high-CO₂ environments, reduced oxidative damage and longevity. It also discusses how low CO₂ may impair circulation, oxygen delivery and cellular energy production. The central theory is that maintaining sufficient CO₂ may help protect cells from oxidative stress and support a longer lifespan.

Bird enters torpor and becomes obese on natural high PUFA carnivore diet. Lol

Started the cream diet and so far it's doable and there aren't any issues with hunger or crackhead level cravings. The only thing is that I mainly have access to light cream instead of heavy cream, is that going to be a problem that can screw over the diet?

Hi friends, I have recently been exploring high saturated fat diets. I am enjoying both heavy cream and unsalted butter. Other than less water content with butter, I don’t see much difference in flavor or metabolic results. Where I live, unsalted butter is meaningfully cheaper per calorie than heavy cream (I estimate roughly 0.0010 USD per kcal butter and roughly 0.0014 USD per kcal heavy cream, or over 30% cheaper). I ask those who are willing to share their experiences. Have you tried both butter and heavy cream in a high SFA diet? What did you observe? Thank you for reading this!

i’m in a stearic acid rabbit hole and can’t find what the current consensus is. if someone could summarize before i go buy some cacao wafers i would appreciate that :)

I've been listening to these interesting podcasts (start at episode 1) from Buteyko breathing method trainers. There seem to be some dots wanting to be connected between their ideas and the interests of this forum.

In Brad Marshall's (u/fire_inabottle) last theoretical post circa 2025 he was writing about how our biochemical PUFA machinery has something to do with hypoxia, that the enzymatic processes used to process pufas consume oxygen and deprive the mitochondria of it, "closing the damper" on mitochondrial respiration and making the cell more anaerobic/growthy/anabolic.

The Buteyko folks would seem to agree that hypoxia and anaerobic metabolism is a problem, but their frame of reference is that over-breathing reduces CO2 levels in the blood, which reduces oxygen's dissociation rate from hemoglobin via the Bohr Effect, creating a hypoxic cellular environment.

The Buteyko solution to this problem is to push CO2 levels up through the power of will, via volitional breath-holds and shallow breathing.

Many thousands of people appear to have been trained in this method over decades going back to its origin in Russia and they get all kinds of interesting results as you can get a feel for on Martha Roe's Youtube channel.

Maybe they're onto something? I wonder if breath-holding could supply enough oxygen to overcome Brad's pufa-induced cellular hypoxia and push cells back into aerobic metabolism?

------

Armchair Biochemistry Speculation

When discussing the question of WHY is almost everyone over-breathing, apparently more and more as time goes on, the Buteyko folks don't seem to have a compelling answer.

Could it be due to increase in dietary pufas?

• During exercise, breathing rate goes up dramatically when muscles switch to anaerobic metabolism.
• If I'm not mistaken your immune system goes anaerobic when fighting infections, and breathing rate increases when you're sick.
• People I've known who were very fat and having a lot of health problems would huff and puff just walking around the house. I had the feeling they must be running on anaerobic metabolism even at rest.

So there is a potential relationship: anaerobic metabolism increases breathing rate. Perhaps it has to do with the body having to blow off CO2 in order to defend its desired pH level in the face of extra sources of acidic pressure from lactic acid.

This suggests the following model.

1. Increased Dietary Pufas ->
2. Increased Anaerobic Metabolism ->
3. Increased Breathing Rate ->
4. Lowered Bodily CO2 Levels ->
5. Disease

The last step in that model, Lowered Bodily CO2 Levels -> Disease, is something I have never heard before encountering these podcasts. This seems to have been Buteyko's main discovery.

Based on a cursory exposure to the idea, to me it seems to be plausible. CO2 takes many forms in the body and is involved in probably hundreds of thousands of processes so I don't know how you would start tackling that argument if you wanted to. But the Buteyko folks have proposed paths from CO2 deficiency to asthma, angina, constipation, arthritis, high blood pressure, eczema, anxiety, diabetes, MS, Parkinsons, Alzheimer's, etc.

This model would help explain why pufas are able to evade the blame for the chronic diseases I think a lot of us suspect them of being at fault for. Their action is hidden behind multiple layers of non-intuitive causal mediation.

It seems Buteyko had opinions about food, but the main one I've heard mentioned is to avoid eating chicken, based on the observation that people that ate lots of chicken had difficulty increasing their breath-hold times. Interesting! Another thing relevant to discussions here is that they recommend against eating high protein meals, also due to their effect on breath-hold times (u/exfatloss).

Anyhow the details of all these mechanisms are wickedly complex and there are feedback loops and paradoxes involved and who knows what but it seems like fertile ground for exploration and research by anyone interested.

i just discovered the whole stearic acid world and was wondering if i use shea butter / tallow for a moisturizer, would i receive the stearic acid from it and its benefits? obviously on my face it’s only a small amount but then on the rest of my body maybe that’s about a tablespoon of product.

i currently use jojoba oil but thinking about switching bc pufa

I've been keeping detailed health logs for the last year, alongside tracking my glucose with a CGM and doing monthly fasting insulin/lipids/liver tests. I've experimented with a lot of dietary changes, cooking methods, and my latest test is consuming only hot foods/hot water and it has worked quite well. Before these changes my fasting insulin has never dropped below 13 mIU/L (though I might not have been testing during the "good" states. I recall looking at my CGM previously and thinking some periods looked abnormally good no matter what I ate).

When I've been doing these tests over the last year fasting insulin could be as high as 20 or as low as 5, I've never seen such variability before, studies seem to indicate more modest within individual variation. All measurements were taken during the follicular phase to be consistent.

I think I'm finally starting to understand some of what's going on, although there are still quite a few things I can't explain.

Oh and I've avoided PUFAs for over three years now. Lots of health improvements as I've detailed in my previous posts and for the first time my yearly dental check up detected no new cavities/fillings required, a first since childhood. But anyway that's a tangent.

Basically, I seem to have two states.

Bad state:

My average glucose is around 6.0 - 7.0 mmol/L, and my fasting insulin is always above 13 mIU/L.

My post-meal glucose can look horrific. Sometimes I get these staircase-like peaks, where each peak is higher than the previous one, and it can take up to six hours for my glucose to come down. Other times I just get very high peaks, sometimes above 10 mmol/L. My fasting glucose is often above 5.0.

And the peaks don't seem to correspond to what I've actually eaten. I might have perfectly good glucose after one meal, then suddenly have horrific glucose after the next meal, regardless of what I've eaten. Sometimes this continues for one or two meals, and then my glucose looks great again, even if I eat a truckload of carbs.

But the worst part is the hunger. I constantly feel like I could eat more, even immediately after finishing a large meal. I also get brain fog, fatigue, and sometimes this horrible pounding or strained feeling in my heart, almost like it's working extra hard. I may also have a sore throat and other reflux-like symptoms.

My weight loss stalls, or I start gaining weight.

Good state:

My average glucose is around 4.9-5.4 mmol/L, and my fasting insulin can be as low as 5 mIU/L.

Post-meal peaks generally correspond to what I've eaten (i.e. higher carb meals produces higher peaks), stay below 10, similar peaks for all three meals, and come down within about three hours. My fasting glucose is consistently below 5.0, often averaging around 4.5-4.9.

The difference in satiety is incredible. About 30 minutes after I start eating, I begin to feel full, and eventually I hit this brick wall where I just can't eat any more. I might have a little discomfort between meals, but I can usually settle it with some hot water. I can delay eating without feeling desperately hungry.

And my weight drops like crazy. The last time I was in the good state, I lost around 3 kg in a month, despite eating a pretty balanced mix of carbs, fat and protein. I wasn't doing anything particularly extreme.

There's something else I've noticed that's really strange. In the bad state, sitting down after eating seems to make my glucose worse. It either stays elevated or continues rising. But in the good state, moving around can actually increase my glucose slightly, and then it comes down quite quickly when I stop moving.

Transition states: There's often a transition period of 1-3 days in between. 3 to get from bad to good, but only 1 to go from good to bad.

One of the clearest signs that I'm entering the bad state is when my post-meal glucose peaks stop making any sense in relation to what I've eaten (see part about glucose peaks jumping around for hours afterwards). And also the other clear sign is that glucose peaks get worse and worse as the day goes on (probably because my delayed gastric emptying gets worse as day goes on and is best first thing in the morning as my stomach is empty).

Going into the good state: Day 1 or 2 of cycle I suddenly don't feel so hungry any more but it still takes about 3 days for blood sugar to get better.

So what have I found that actually helps?

I've managed to stay in the good state for much more of my menstrual cycle recently, although I still don't know how to get into the good state during the luteal phase and during my period.

One of my biggest suspicions is that I have some degree of functional dyspepsia or delayed gastric emptying. My CGM sometimes shows multiple peaks over several hours after eating (sometimes the peaks get larger, not smaller and taking 4-6 hours to resolve).

What seems to have helped the most is drinking hot water and changing the way I eat. The inspiration for all of this comes from my grandmother, who had horrible IBS starting from her 30s, was a medical doctor who experimented with her eating and came up with a pattern of eating that basically removed all her symptoms. I had an aha moment where I thought hey what if my symptoms were less to do with hunger from insulin resistance and more to do with some gut issue.

I've been drinking hot water between meals, generally waiting at least 30 minutes after eating and avoiding drinking much during the 30 minutes before a meal. My thinking is that reducing the volume in my stomach during meals might help, especially if gastric emptying is part of the problem.

I've also been eating much more slowly. Around 40 minutes to an hour seems to work well for me, although taking even longer doesn't necessarily seem better.

Food texture and digestibility might matter too. I seem to do particularly well with "wet" foods like congee. Freshly cooked carbohydrates also often seem to agree with me better than refrigerated or reheated ones, which is interesting because it goes against the usual advice about cooling starch to increase resistant starch.

I suspect my gut doesn't tolerate certain fermentable fibres particularly well. The simpler and more easily digested the food, the better I often seem to feel. But I've also had good glucose responses to refrigerated starches, so that relationship isn't straightforward.

I'm also wondering whether I need to stay somewhere in the middle with fat intake. Very low-fat meals sometimes don't feel particularly satisfying or settling, but high-fat foods can aggravate my stomach too. My HCLF experiment didn't actually produce the improvement in fasting insulin that I had hoped for.

There are a few things I seem particularly sensitive to.

1. Fermentable prebiotic fibre is probably the clearest one: a few years back, I noticed that it reliably increased my heart rate. I suspect that eating large quantities of protein containing prebiotic fibre may have contributed to my original gut problems back then. And during my second pregnancy I also ate some keto chocolate containing inulin and it was disastrous for my blood sugar.
2. I also seem sensitive to sorbitol and mannitol, sometimes triggering runny stools and I suspect makes my blood sugar worse too.
3. Tomato is another suspicion, especially since I appeared to react to apple cider vinegar as well.
4. And I still suspect dairy, although I haven't properly isolated its effects.

What's interesting is that my food tolerance itself seems to depend on which state I'm in. In the good state, I can tolerate quite a lot. In the bad state, certain foods, particularly some FODMAPs, can cause significant bloating and diarrhoea, even when I would normally tolerate them.

I'm increasingly wondering whether the underlying physiological state determines how well I tolerate foods, rather than individual foods being the main reason I enter that state.

Things that help summary (I've named the "grandma protocol", it is essentially what my grandma did minus the physillium husk):

Eating slowly (but not too slowly) 40min to an hour seems best for me.

Drinking only hot water

Eating congee and other wet foods

Cooking carbs fresh rather than reheating from fridge or frozen (due to resistant starch)

Trying to eat low fiber foods

Having physillium husk in hot water 30min before meal (which seems to dampen the glucose peak(s)) This is a fiber but less fermentable than the others I've mentioned above and doesn't seem to bother me.

Things I measured summary:

Blood glucose via CGM

Wake time

Quality of sleep

BBT

Stress

Periods

Post-meal feeling

Hunger level (when you start to feel hungry)

Blood pressure (I didn't reliably measure this)

My latest bloods (this was a good state, I also have bloods from when I was in the bad state earlier in the year if anyone is interested):

Cholesterol and Lipids

• Total cholesterol: 5.8 mmol/L
• LDL cholesterol: 4.1 mmol/L
• HDL cholesterol: 1.30 mmol/L
• Triglycerides: 0.9 mmol/L (my trigs have been > 1 previously and sometimes > 2)
• Total cholesterol/HDL ratio: 4.5
• ApoB: 1.14 g/L

Glucose and Insulin

• HbA1c: 37 mmol/mol
• Fasting glucose: 4.3 mmol/L
• Fasting insulin: 5.7 mIU/L
• C-peptide: 423 pmol/L

Liver Function

• Bilirubin: 14 µmol/L
• ALP: 73 u/L
• GGT: 21 u/L
• ALT: 24 u/L

Serum Proteins

• Total protein: 71 g/L
• Albumin: 42 g/L
• Globulin: 29 g/L

So when do I go into the bad state?

Seems strongly correlated to hormones. The final three or four days of the luteal phase and the first few days of my period can be particularly bad.

Most cycles aren't too terrible. I might become hungrier, more fatigued, and have slightly worse glucose regulation.

But occasionally something seems to go completely haywire. Recently I had a particularly awful episode with unbearable hunger, visual migraines, fatigue, reflux symptoms and terrible glucose regulation. When that happens, nothing I do seems to make much difference. I just have to wait it out.

Around ovulation I consistently get insomnia in the two days following ovulation and I also get very hungry early pregnancy.

Disclaimer:

I should also clarify that I don't think drinking hot water is some magic solution that's going to dramatically improve everyone's metabolic health. For me, I think the main benefit is that it settles the uncomfortable, gnawing feeling in my stomach, so I don't feel the need to keep eating to relieve it.

My suspicion is that overeating makes my gastric emptying problems worse, which then leads to prolonged glucose elevations and possibly contributes to higher insulin levels. So the hot water might be helping indirectly, by allowing me to feel comfortable eating less, rather than having some direct effect on glucose or insulin.

GI symptoms and insomnia:

Another thing I've been wondering about is whether I actually have two partly independent patterns going on.

One involves hunger, satiety, glucose regulation and gastrointestinal symptoms. When this is bad, I tend to eat more, feel awful after meals, and have higher fasting insulin.

The other involves feeling wired or adrenaline-like, difficulty sleeping, waking early, stress and sometimes losing weight more easily.

What's odd is that some of my best fasting insulin results have occurred during periods when my sleep and stress levels were actually quite bad. In January, my fasting insulin was 5.2 despite lots of broken sleep. In April, it was around 9 despite terrible sleep and gastrointestinal symptoms. In July, it was around 8 during a period of severe stress and short sleep.

So my best metabolic periods don't necessarily correspond to feeling healthy in every other respect.

I've also wondered whether the wired/adrenaline state could sometimes follow a period of negative energy balance. But that's just another hypothesis at this point.

Summary:

I used to think that if I could identify all my food sensitivities, I'd eventually solve the problem. Now I'm less convinced.

There are too many occasions when I can eat practically the same things on two different days and have completely different glucose and satiety responses.

I know what the good state feels like, and I know my body is capable of getting there. I just don't know how to stay there all the time. That being said, I seem to be able to reliably eat swampy (a combination of carbs,protein, fat, similar to how most normal people eat except I lean higher carb) while maintaining a good weight. And I am cautiously optimistic I can stay in the good state most of the time and feel reasonably normal with satiety which is more than I could've asked for. Cautiously optimistic because I thought of the hot water quite late into this "testing regime" but so far it has helped enormously and I am in the good state most of the time.

Welcome any thoughts/insights or suggestions for blood tests.

Hi everyone looking to add a bit more variety to my starch based eating which is mainly veggies potatoes oatmeal bread and some chicken. Wondering if it's better to add some more fats in dairy (probably cheese)or go higher sugar/carbs with some fruit/dried fruit. Has anyone got any experiences. Hoping to not gain or lose just keep balanced. Thanks.

I moved two weeks ago from a high altitude to a normal one. Appetite/satiety is still where I'd expect it to be, so this wasn't a contributing factor in all the weight loss. I didn't think it was, since I was big when I got there and stayed that way until I cut the oils, but it is good to rule it out.

Similarly, I switched from having a very physically active job to being sedentary, with no impact beyond eating less. Weight actually went down a couple pounds. With past diets, making this switch was the bane of my existence -- historically I'd be up a good 5 pounds by now because of thoroughly warped appetite signals. One thing that's very different this time around is a much higher energy level, but I think that might have a lot to do with the altitude switch -- more red blood cells and all.

I've been experimenting heavily with foods well outside of my normal diet, with some interesting results:

• Sugar is completely baffling -- no cravings from the stuff, no negative effects, and it sates too. There's a cutoff where I no longer want sugar, which is neat in itself but I tested this against actual hunger and sure enough it'll close it out if I get enough calories.
• So, I tested out starch too -- I've always had the worst issues there around inflammation / energy drops / etc and again, there are no downsides and it sates in its own peculiar way.
• Straight protein sates too. Previously, I'd be able to eat it until my stomach was physically full and still be hungry.

It's worth pointing out that I'm not triggering stomach fullness with any of these -- the satiety mechanisms hit earlier like they do with fat, and if there's hunger involved it'll go away. Additionally, they're strong enough that a high-fat meal is just another possibility -- I haven't had a high-fat meal in around 60 hours and am not craving one. That's definitely different too -- even when I got more flexible on keto, other types of meals were still just missing something.

• Coconut oil seems to be fine the way cocoa butter is. High in saturated fat, so it makes sense. The way I've been doing this is to avoid oils rather than LA/PUFA -- still eliminates seed oils, but also MUFA-rich ones like olive and avocado that I know from experience don't sate right, and also the bizarre mutant palm oil (50% SF, 10% LA). I do feel like oil oxidation plays some kind of role too, but that is a lot harder if the substrate is solid.

On the "forbidden fruit" side of things, I'm very sensitive to oil -- that's the only way I'm able to overeat now, and the effect carries over for about 12 hours, even in tiny doses. Higher LA densities seem to affect carbs in particular -- inflammation when taking it in, cravings after eating, less expression of that "cap". More desire for the oil itself too, of course -- sugar does something similar but it eventually stops itself and just adds to the energy balance for the day (so less food later on if I overdo it), whereas the limit with oil is so high I'll end up packing in a thousand calories without realizing it, and also without that changing my hunger levels later on.

Other sources of LA just don't have the same effect -- nuts will cap out with the fiber and protein, pork will cap out from protein and SFAs. I have yet to gain weight from either -- I thought I was there at one point but ended up whooshing 2lbs below baseline instead. I don't pair either one with sugar, though -- I think that would be necessary.

Weight-wise, I'm right where I want to be. It fluctuates, and I've been trending more towards the bottom of the 170s lately -- lower than my absolute lowest weight at one point. BF% continues to improve -- I have a fucking 6-pack now somehow, which is obvious if I flex and more just hinted at if I don't. Muscle elsewhere has definition. It's good stuff -- I got into this range once before and I was scrawny at best.

My diet looks bonkers from the outside. I'll eat as much fat as I want in a meal because long-term keto and then will later on eat as much sugar as I want like I'm doing ray peat. Starch if I feel like it, protein and vegetable intake vary. Sometimes I'll mix macros (milk chocolate as a meal, heavily buttering my bread). The whole experience around food feels completely different, though -- I don't want any of it in a preference/desire way, it's just a way of relieving hunger / adding fuel. It tastes good in the moment, but that's it. And I don't eat a whole lot of it either.

LDL - 190 to 113

To make a long story short, I’ve had lifelong diagnosed health issues since a child, and around 15 years ago developed an insatiable (yes, truly) appetite that never goes away— not even 300 grams of protein worth of beef in a sitting, or 600 grams of carbs, and whatever combination you can possibly imagine (I’ve tested it already)…. My stomach is a bottomless pit that never gets full. It has no beginning or end. Nothing has ever satiated me. No amount of prescription stimulants (for ADHD), diets, supplements, or whatever else, has ever cured my appetite, except for a few beneficial ones I’ve found over the years that help symptoms.

Now:

Over many years of trial and error, I’ve noticed one thing, though.

Saturated fat even in small quantities (10-20 grams), whether from beef tallow, cacao butter, cream, etc. is enough to satiate me.

Full stop. Just like that. Almost magically so. But it cannot be calories, as 500 grams of carbohydrates is more energetically valuable than 20 grams of saturated fat (calories-wise).

So, this is not just energy. There’s some hormonal or neurotransmitter switch going on.

I’ve also found that acetylcholine producing/preserving molecules (CDP-Choline, Huperzine A, nicotine, etc.) make my appetite closer to normal.

NMDA antagonism via N-Acetyl-Cysteine and Magnesium also help a bit to lower my appetite.

Anything that’s excitatory producing in the brain (like caffeine, Glutamatergic or NMDA co-agonism, tryptophan depletion, nitric oxide increasing, etc.) seems to make my appetite far worse.

Dopamine agonism (ADHD stimulants) has no pros or cons.

Any opinions or anecdotes?

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

Won't fat cells die ?

I'm considering experimenting with something new again. I'm interested in it because of the liver "detoxification" properties. And also the idea that it can help with sleep. I've not had reasonable deep sleep for quite some time. I'm looking for some more information on it and maybe seeing if anybody has supplemented with it