Optimal Diet

[flyingpylon]

I put a scoop of collagen peptides in my coffee. It gives it a creamier texture than straight black, but not as much as "non-dairy creamer" (which is usually corn syrup solids) and certainly nothing like real cream.

[Cortopassi]

I put a scoop of collagen peptides in my coffee. It gives it a creamier texture than straight black, but not as much as "non-dairy creamer" (which is usually corn syrup solids) and certainly nothing like real cream.

I will have to try that. Cream is free at work (actually 1/2 and 1/2 so even a bit more carbs.)

[yankees60]

FYI, I am a data centric person, esp. when it comes to my health, here is a graph of my weight for the past 8 years. For the recent drop -- the main difference from other attempts is the adding of twice a week 24 hour fasts. And true intermittent fasting otherwise (except for cream in coffee)

I have no goal weight, I feel fine here. It is just good to see it can be done without hunger and without cravings and I wish doctors would preach this more. Every 5lbs I kind of go, let's try for another 5, but soon my wife may think I have a problem!

This is now the 20th year that I've been logging my daily weight.

Below is my graph for those 20 years. The top line (red) is the most I weighed any one day of that year. The middle line (blue) is my average weight for the year. The bottom line (green) is the least I weighed any one day that year.

In late 2015 I changed my diet from vegetarian to vegan.

I'm currently on a nine (9) day streak wherein I am setting personal records during these 20 years for weighing the least I have ever weighed on that date. Today at 144.6 is both the lowest for any April 11th AND for this year.

Vinny

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[Mark Leavy]

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New Orleans

[WiseOne]

Looks yummy Mark! But mojito has a ton of sugar.

Pugchief back to the fluoride question....I disagree about fluoride in toothpaste not being systemically absorbed. If it can get into your teeth, it should be much more easily absorbed through gums and mucus membranes. It's also a small molecule so very likely to diffuse readily - depending on what it's attached to though.

There is enough evidence about fluoride as an endocrine disruptor to make me not want to ingest it. Also, municipal water supplies greatly exceed that 4 ppm limit you cited. NYC is up in the 7ppm range for example, and it's been higher in the past. And toothpaste would be higher yet. The main point is that if my dental health personally does fine without fluoride, then you can hardly argue that I need it, can you? And that "N of 1" situation is all I care about.

There is plenty of evidence that SOMETHING in our modern diet & environment is messing with our endocrine systems. Girls reaching menarche years earlier than in the past, the epidemic of hypothyroidism etc. I'm sure there are multiple factors but this one is a possibility. Even if there is a benefit for some people, it's not exactly good public policy to do something that will harm large groups of people in order to benefit another group (though I suppose that's the sort of effect you get with most government actions).

Plus it's just kind of maddening that I'm paying the city to put fluoride in my drinking water, and simultaneously paying a company for a filter that will take it back out again.

[Mountaineer]

Yellowest teeth I’ve ever seen were on a guy from west Texas; I worked with him in the late 60s, early 70s when we lived in the Houston area. He said it was the result of a lot of fluoride in the water when he was growing up. He also said he had never had a cavity. He was 45 or 50 when I knew him.

[pp4me]

Yellowest teeth I’ve ever seen were on a guy from west Texas; I worked with him in the late 60s, early 70s when we lived in the Houston area. He said it was the result of a lot of fluoride in the water when he was growing up. He also said he had never had a cavity. He was 45 or 50 when I knew him.

Yellowest teeth I've seen were in recent photos of Prince Phillip before he died. You'd think with all that money he could have gotten them whitened a bit.

Also looked like a walking corpse.

I'd say the Royal diet wasn't good for his health if it wasn't for the fact he lived to be 99.

[WiseOne]

Good point MangoMan!!

Does it matter if the plastic is BPA-free? I almost never buy plastic bottles of water, but I have a Sodastream plastic bottle that I use for making sparkling water from my tap. Otherwise I chill water in a metal SIG bottle.

[Xan]

Good point MangoMan!!

Does it matter if the plastic is BPA-free? I almost never buy plastic bottles of water, but I have a Sodastream plastic bottle that I use for making sparkling water from my tap. Otherwise I chill water in a metal SIG bottle.

What about canned soda water? Is that lined with plastic?

[Xan]

Good point MangoMan!!

Does it matter if the plastic is BPA-free? I almost never buy plastic bottles of water, but I have a Sodastream plastic bottle that I use for making sparkling water from my tap. Otherwise I chill water in a metal SIG bottle.

The water spends hardly any time in that plastic Sodastream bottle, compared to sitting out in the heat on a shipping palate.

The Sodastream Penguin has a glass curafe. https://www.williams-sonoma.com/product ... ter-maker/

[Cortopassi]

Just an update and observations:

1) As Fung says many times, "how often" you eat is significantly more important than "what" you eat (even though you shouldn't be eating refined stuff anyway.)

2) I have been doing 2x a week dinner to dinner fasts, and otherwise do my normal intermittent fasting (no breakfast except coffee/cream).

3) I have 100% removed snacking. There's no doubt this was the linchpin for me. I must have been keeping my insulin perpetually high...banana at 9:30, couple pieces of chocolate later morning, lunch, bag of chips or granola bar mid afternoon, dinner, something else around 9-10 at night. Overall the number of calories I was eating still wasn't a lot compared to most people, but I was effectively eating all the time from an insulin point of view so I was storing those calories.

4) I can eat carbs without a blowup now. Just had my Dad's 89th birthday. Cake, ice cream, pizza, wine. I added one pound from that which was gone within a day. Previously, something like that would have popped me up 3-5 pounds and taken a couple weeks to revert.

Just hoping this is helpful for others, which is why I am posting.

https://www.dietdoctor.com/my-single-be ... t-loss-tip

[stuper1]

So, five days a week you eat lunch and dinner, and two days a week you eat only dinner, and no other eating besides those meals? Am I understanding that right?

[Cortopassi]

So, five days a week you eat lunch and dinner, and two days a week you eat only dinner, and no other eating besides those meals? Am I understanding that right?

Correct. Tue/Thurs only dinner. I was amazed at how tasty and satisfying dinner is on those days!

The interesting thing is how it simplifies things. No worries about what to make, what to eat on those days. I either just work through or pull out my Kindle.

I've never been one to feel hungry anyway, so it was easy for me. I suspect it might be hard for some, esp. since eating at certain times becomes a habit.

The one thing I have been struggling with is whether I have a goal weight in mind. With this current setup, I am reliably around 182-185lbs. Whereas I was previously plateaued above about 193. I just don't know what I want to end up at. It's almost a game now. When I pull up "ideal" weight calculators, for my height, the range is 171 to 196 I believe.

I should be happy where I am at. Might take me a while to actually let that sink in. I am still mentally the fat 7th grader.

[stuper1]

Very interesting. Thank you for telling about this. I should give it a try. I certainly need to lose a few pounds, and the things I've tried haven't worked.

[yankees60]

Possibly explains why I weigh almost ten less pounds today than I did a year ago (155.4 then, 145.8 today)?

Aside from drinking a quart of tea this morning around 8:30 AM...I consumed nothing else until a big bowl of peanuts around 5:00 PM.

The rest of the day...I will have a supper of two bowls of a grain / vegetable mix with finally, a few hours later, a bowl of a mix of water, raisins, raw rolled oats, peanut butter, red grapes.

Therefore all the eating confined to a relatively small time period as opposed to constant eating throughout the day.

[Hal]

Possibly explains why I weigh almost ten less pounds today than I did a year ago (155.4 then, 145.8 today)?

Aside from drinking a quart of tea this morning around 8:30 AM...I consumed nothing else until a big bowl of peanuts around 5:00 PM.

The rest of the day...I will have a supper of two bowls of a grain / vegetable mix with finally, a few hours later, a bowl of a mix of water, raisins, raw rolled oats, peanut butter, red grapes.

Therefore all the eating confined to a relatively small time period as opposed to constant eating throughout the day.

My brother practices the dietary schedule he learnt in Japan. Went from looking like the "Michelin Man" to how he was in his 20's.
His health has improved dramatically.
https://zenretreat.com/philosophy/

[Mark Leavy]

Very interesting. Thank you for telling about this. I should give it a try. I certainly need to lose a few pounds, and the things I've tried haven't worked.

If your goal is to lose weight, nothing works better than not eating. You can "not eat" for as long as you have excess weight. A day, a half a day, a week, a month. It's all good. Get plenty of water and salts. It's pretty mentally clarifying also - you feel like a zen master.

I normally only eat once a day, but just for fun I stopped eating for a couple of weeks. I was already lean, so I started eating again after 11 days as I was losing too much muscle. After the initial large water weight that you will lose in the first few days, you will average about 12 ounces of real weight loss per day.

Unfortunately, the leaner you are, the more of that is muscle loss - so don't keep it up for too long if you have already lost the majority of your fat.

If I seriously wanted to lose a lot of weight in the most efficient (and healthy) manner possible, I would do some version of a "Protein Sparing Modified Fast" (PSMF). My version would be a strict diet of as many eggs fried in butter as I wanted, (no bacon, because it is too easy to OD on bacon), 30 grams of collagen, 1000mg of Vitamin C and a bottle of wine every day. Do your pullups and pushups and squats to tell your body that it is not allowed to sacrifice muscle for calories.

If you are already off of carbs, this would be a super easy way to slim down. If you are not off carbs, it would be painful.

[Kriegsspiel]

Very interesting. Thank you for telling about this. I should give it a try. I certainly need to lose a few pounds, and the things I've tried haven't worked.

If your goal is to lose weight, nothing works better than not eating. You can "not eat" for as long as you have excess weight. A day, a half a day, a week, a month. It's all good. Get plenty of water and salts. It's pretty mentally clarifying also - you feel like a zen master.

I normally only eat once a day, but just for fun I stopped eating for a couple of weeks. I was already lean, so I started eating again after 11 days as I was losing too much muscle. After the initial large water weight that you will lose in the first few days, you will average about 12 ounces of real weight loss per day.

Unfortunately, the leaner you are, the more of that is muscle loss - so don't keep it up for too long if you have already lost the majority of your fat.

If I seriously wanted to lose a lot of weight in the most efficient (and healthy) manner possible, I would do some version of a "Protein Sparing Modified Fast" (PSMF). My version would be a strict diet of as many eggs fried in butter as I wanted, (no bacon, because it is too easy to OD on bacon), 30 grams of collagen, 1000mg of Vitamin C and a bottle of wine every day. Do your pullups and pushups and squats to tell your body that it is not allowed to sacrifice muscle for calories.

If you are already off of carbs, this would be a super easy way to slim down. If you are not off carbs, it would be painful.

Eggs + butter sounds pretty close to an epileptic ketogenic diet (it's about 17% protein, 83% fat for the eggs and butter only) plus wine, not PSMF. PSMF is protein strictly mother fucker. It works like a charm though.

[Mark Leavy]

Eggs + butter sounds pretty close to an epileptic ketogenic diet (it's about 17% protein, 83% fat for the eggs and butter only) plus wine, not PSMF. PSMF is protein strictly mother fucker. It works like a charm though.

As per usual, you are correct. Damn. I can't slip anything by this crowd.

Or, in some circles, PSMF is known as the "vodka and slim jims" diet.

[stuper1]

Cortopassi,

I thought of more questions. For your meals, do you follow some kind of food plan on foods that you will or won't eat? How about quantity? Do you eat as much as you want, or have some kind of limit? I haven't read this whole thread, so sorry if you've already mentioned this.

Do you have a rule or guideline on how much time should elapse between lunch and dinner?

Thank you.

[Cortopassi]

Cortopassi,

I thought of more questions. For your meals, do you follow some kind of food plan on foods that you will or won't eat? How about quantity? Do you eat as much as you want, or have some kind of limit? I haven't read this whole thread, so sorry if you've already mentioned this.

Do you have a rule or guideline on how much time should elapse between lunch and dinner?

Thank you.

I am trying to make this a long term livable change, so....

--I already limit carbs, just because I feel better when I do. So my "lunch" typically is what would be between two slices of bread or in a bun or in a tortilla, but instead cut up into a bowl.
--I normally eat lunch around noon, and dinner anywhere from 5:30 to 6:30. No changes there.
--I've mentioned before that I am not someone who ever typically gets hungry, so I have not had to change or up the amounts I eat at dinner during fast days. I "probably" eat a bit more than usual though. I don't know how someone who gets hungry would prevent themselves from overeating at dinner on a fast day. Food tastes really good after 20+ hours of not having any (side benefit!)
--As yet, I do not seem to "have" to limit carbs to an unacceptable low level to stay at this weight. Birthday eating last weekend with lots of carbs barely budged my weight. I have been eating "dessert" after dinner, things like leftover cake, a spoon of Nutella, M&Ms as well, without any effect on weight.

This last point is pretty much what is convincing me it is the time restricted eating with no snacking that is the game changer for my body. To be 100% clear -- when I have fallen off the wagon on Paleo or Keto or lo-carb, whatever you want to call it, in the past, I never fell off the eating lo carb during lunch and dinner, and I always still skipped breakfast. I just added higher carb snacks, mainly pre-lunch and after dinner. Another data point snacking is the root cause.

I seem to have hit a plateau at the 183 level for the past couple weeks. Since this is a good 10lbs lower than my previous typical plateau, I have to mentally figure out if I am fine with it or want to keep on going.

I have no real intention of going longer than dinner to dinner fasts. No real interest in seeing what happens at 36 or 48 hours. I want this to be sustainable.

[stuper1]

Good to know. I need to try something like this. Thank you.

[Mark Leavy]

PSMF is protein strictly mother fucker. It works like a charm though.

Interesting post from Mark’s Daily Apple today.

I had been pushing more fat and (relatively) less protein over the last few years. Mark is suggesting that was a mistake. As the (other) Mark Rippetoe would quickly tell me.

For the old school carnivores, The Bear had long ago pushed reducing fat as you age.

[Kriegsspiel]

I had been pushing more fat and (relatively) less protein over the last few years. Mark is suggesting that was a mistake. As the (other) Mark Rippetoe would quickly tell me.

Well, it all depends on the specifics. If you're eating 4000 calories a day, and 2000 of them are coming from 500g of protein, then yea you would be fine eating "relatively" less protein and more fat. But if you're dieting on 2000 calories then you'll want relatively more protein and less fat/carb. The idea is to eat "enough" protein, then make up the rest of your calories with whatever works best.

For the old school carnivores, The Bear had long ago pushed reducing fat as you age.

His booklet is riddled with nonsense, but that dude lived a wild life.

[Cortopassi]

All I aim for is to keep carbs low. I figure the ratio of fat and protein, given how I eat, will take care of itself -- we don't purposely eat lean cuts of meat, for example, and shoot for good marbling and things like chicken thighs vs. breasts.

Skimmed that Bear guy's book. He lost me at salt is poison. I love salt.