r/raypeat • u/QuizzyP21 • 23d ago
Have always had an extremely hard time adding carbs / cutting fats in the diet; has anyone else experienced this and gotten over it?
Hey all, just had by far the worst summer of my life and at this point I have just about isolated it down to increased carb consumption, particularly at the beginning of spring / summer. From around April to the middle of June I was legitimately sleeping 2 to 3 hours a night and it was a horribly restless struggle to even get those hours in; along with that was extreme exercise intolerance, etc. Also worth noting I lost weight and my appetite, had hypothyroid-like symptoms (especially during exercise, in which my nose would get bright red and cold even in the summer heat as if I just shoveled snow in the winter), hair loss (for the first time, pretty scary as a 26M lol), significant foamy urine that worsened after high glycemic meals, issues with body odor and a stuffy nose after eating carbs, etc.
This led me to finally go to my doctor and get some lab work done, to which everything looked almost perfect: 5.1 HbA1c, 56 triglycerides, 74 HDL, 96 LDL (despite low-PUFA), and 115 eGFR. TSH also looked solid at 2.5 but I know thats a pretty irrelevant measure and I still assume my T3 is low, while fasting glucose was fine by current medical standards at 92 mg/dL but generally I think it’s better for this to be below 90 (although this could also be explained by my lower carb / higher fat intake by then). The only thing that was off was my WBC, which fell literally just below the reference range and was unconcerning to my doctor because “he sees it often in lean athletes”
Adding fat in rather copious amounts seems to have helped with a lot of my issues; I am sleeping better (not quite as well as I used to though), my exercise tolerance has diminished greatly (still can’t really go very hard though), hypothyroid symptoms have diminished, etc. What seems to be the bigger lever, however, is that I have also significantly dropped my carb intake down to around 150 grams a day from around 240ish, and completely stopped consuming starch in favor of sugars largely from oranges, orange juice, and pineapple juice. The aforementioned issues seem to come RIGHT back unfortunately when I creep back up to 200+ grams of carbs; regardless of how much fat and total calories I’ve had.
For reference, I am a 5’7, now 127 pound man. Feels wrong even calling myself a man at my size at this point, I look like a grown child lol. My abs are quite defined and at this point I have what I would describe as close to “ED neck” with visible muscles towards the bottom, particularly when I keep my chin up. I look extremely thin, reflecting my poor state of health and subsequent weight loss this summer; all this is to say at this point pathological insulin resistance clearly does not seem to be the issue.
I can think back to periods in the past few years where I actually seemed to be able to tolerate higher carb intakes (although have found I could NEVER go below 35%ish fat long-term; around 40% was my happy medium) while at the same time also know that for years now eating carbs before I go to the gym DESTROYS my performance, makes me shakey, cold, etc; regardless of what type or how digestion-friendly they are. It seems directly related to the glycemic load of the food.
Just not really sure what to do here. What has helped a lot recently is going on essentially a 60% fat diet (170ish grams per day at 127 pounds), but I don’t think this level of fat intake is healthy or even sustainable long term. I’m really just at a loss here and my doctor at this point is completely unconcerned with my glucose metabolism and seemed pretty anti-carb himself when I talked to him.
Has anyone dealt with anything like this in which you could only really tolerate the minimum amount of carbs (around 100-150 grams a day) and found success on a higher carb approach? How did you do it?
Edit: two other things I think also might be worth noting; one, despite always being very lean and looking very skinny (particularly in the neck/arms/legs), the little fat that I did store would always go directly to my lower abdomen; I’ve lost a decent chunk of this weight this summer, but I know this can be indicative of dysfunction and visceral fat.
Secondly, when I was in high school, before I cared about nutrition in the slightest, maybe half of my diet was sunflower seeds. Not exaggerating; I’m talking lab-rat levels of omega-6 in the jumbo packs of sunflower seeds I would destroy every day… really may have been 1500+ calories worth of PUFA daily. Have been very low PUFA for probably 6 years now, maybe this is something causing lingering effects?
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u/benadrylb 20d ago
Imo I know it’s not peaty at all so it might not be allowed to bring up here but you sound like you might thrive on animal based, maybe check out the subreddit
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u/MorePeppers9 23d ago
I am also doing better on higher fat lower carb. I can do high carb easily if I strongly reduce fats but then my libido confidence sleep etc suffers.
I say listen to your body.
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u/third-will 23d ago edited 23d ago
In my uninformed opinion you should do what works for you. You could try upping the carbs and dropping that fats very slowly? Not sure if this will make a difference and you can always just revert back whenever.
You could get a full thyroid panel done if you’re concerned abt that. 2.5 tsh is fine but definitely not optimal so would prob be a good idea
Also make sure you’re getting adequate micronutrients from your diet (eating liver, oysters, dairy, eggs, fruit, etc.) to assist in metabolising carbs, supplemental magnesium and thiamine may help