completely overwhelmed!!

[Ioanna]

Hello all,

I made maybe one introductory post a while ago, and have since been reading here and everywhere trying to find my way... but I'm as confused as ever!  I'm hoping that with all the experience here, I can get people's opinions on how to get back on track.

I came here from a sorta healthy SAD (if there is such a thing) to vegetarian to raw vegan to all animal/ products that included raw red meat, some raw dairy, raw and cooked eggs, cooked chicken, ... I think that sums it up. 

The shift from vegan to animal foods came with about simply bc vegan wasn't working for me and I wanted to try eliminating starch due to my IBS.  This was a fantastic change!  I lost 10 lbs practically overnite which felt awesome!  I didnt think I could weigh that little at my height and be healthy, but I was eating a ton of food and felt great, digestion and all!   

Lurking over at Charles' forum I decided to take this a step further and try zc.  Red meat is my fave, so easy enough.  I just never ate more than 30% fat before.  The first two weeks were all red meat pan seared with 80% fat.  I gained about 12 lbs in two weeks.... a disgusting 12 lbs!  I felt disgusting, bloated, my stomach would not stop girgling after meals, running to the bathroom...  Despite all of this,I did enjoy some sense of calm about not needing to eat much and improved energy.  But I was too uncomfortable.  So, I lowered the fat a lot by eating mostly pan seared lean red meat, cooked eggs, and cooked chicken.  This got my weight back to normal pretty quickly, but I did this for my weight... I'm not sure it's so healthy.  I'd like to give ZC a chance, experience keto-adaption, and what ever other benefits there are.  Oh, I tried pemmican too.  I love it and it's convenience but it makes me extremely thirsty (I use no salt nor seasonings) and my tummy swells and talks to me!

So... I'm tired of screwing up and wondering where to go next.  Like what kind of advice do you have for a newbie or what do you know now that you wish you knew when you started?  Has zero carb been a hit or miss for you?  What % fat/protein?  Adjustments in caloric intake?

And finally, I have to add that constancy and control of my weight is very important to me and I feel like I'm losing control.  I do a lot of modeling, so I get anxious when a dietary change isn't working, but it's my name and paycheck on the line.  Maybe I don't stick some changes out long enough for the benefit?  The problem is that being female, I don't have to be healthy to model... I just have to fit the clothes.  It's awful, but true.  Still, I pride myself on staying fit and healthy and still being able to do what I do.  This recent experience with zc and weight gain has (for the first time) made me so upset and desperate with my body. 


Sorry for the long post and desperation, but I thank you for reading and in advance to any who post!

Thanks!
Ioanna

[TylerDurden]

Cooked food is notorious for increasing one's weight. This is partly because toxins from the cooked food get stored in the fat-layers. I would strongly suggest going raw and unprocessed, and going for grassfed meat. Also, many people find it easier to do very low carb rather than zero-carb(I'm one example).

[carnivore]

Cooked food is notorious for increasing one's weight. This is partly because toxins from the cooked food get stored in the fat-layers. I would strongly suggest going raw and unprocessed, and going for grassfed meat. Also, many people find it easier to do very low carb rather than zero-carb(I'm one example).

Do you have any evidence to prove that toxins stored in the fat can really add weight ?
I would be surprised that the body could store several kilos of toxins...

[TylerDurden]

Do you have any evidence to prove that toxins stored in the fat can really add weight ?
I would be surprised that the body could store several kilos of toxins...

I don't think it's necessarily a case of a load of toxins. Rather that, the body is stimulated into producing more fat so as to store the toxins in. As regards evidence, I can only point to mine and numerous other RAFers' experience that indicates thet eating cooked foods puts on weight(15 to 20kg, in my case) - 20kg if I consume dairy).

There is also the issue of water-retention, re cooked foods adding on weight.

[carnivore]

I don't think it's necessarily a case of a load of toxins. Rather that, the body is stimulated into producing more fat so as to store the toxins in. As regards evidence, I can only point to mine and numerous other RAFers' experience that indicates thet eating cooked foods puts on weight(15 to 20kg, in my case) - 20kg if I consume dairy).

There is also the issue of water-retention, re cooked foods adding on weight.

Isn't carbs that stimulate fat production, and salt (and carbs) that makes water retention ?
Raw dairy can also puts on weight. No need pasteurized dairy.
Not convinced that it is the toxins from cooked food that put on weight. Simply, cooking encourages to eat more, and to mixe carbs/fat/protein...

[goodsamaritan]

Wai Diet - Fruits, extra virgin olive oil, egg yolks, raw sea food was made by Wai Genriiu, said to be a model.  Stresses on clear skin, cures all acne and all pimples.  Always eat your fruit with a fat.  It is a high fat high carb diet.  Former acne sufferers swear by it.

In my experience, fruit does not make me fat.  Starches do.  But not fruit.

[TylerDurden]

Wai Diet - Fruits, extra virgin olive oil, egg yolks, raw sea food was made by Wai Genriiu, said to be a model.  Stresses on clear skin, cures all acne and all pimples.  Always eat your fruit with a fat.  It is a high fat high carb diet.  Former acne sufferers swear by it.

In my experience, fruit does not make me fat.  Starches do.  But not fruit.

I agree. Fruit alone(as a former Fruitarian) didn't make me fat, it made me ultra-thin. But a high-fat/high-carb diet is deadly dangerous, even if raw.

[TylerDurden]

Isn't carbs that stimulate fat production, and salt (and carbs) that makes water retention ?
Raw dairy can also puts on weight. No need pasteurized dairy.
Not convinced that it is the toxins from cooked food that put on weight. Simply, cooking encourages to eat more, and to mixe carbs/fat/protein...

I agree that raw dairy(and also pasteurised dairy) can put on weight. I'm not so sure re carbs creating water-retention, as, when I was doing cooked zero-carb, my weight was nowhere near the amount I had when eating rawpalaeo.

[Nicola]

I agree. Fruit alone(as a former Fruitarian) didn't make me fat, it made me ultra-thin. But a high-fat/high-carb diet is deadly dangerous, even if raw.

Last summer you put on weight and mentioned having to reduce the fruit.

Fruitarian is not paleo; it is a modern answer just like vegetarianism and all the other diet approaches modern humans choose in order to solve some kind of desire or meaning of life.

http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2009/04/synethesis-of-fat-in-liver.html

Nicola

[Raw Kyle]

Welcome. My fat and lean percentages are never calculated but I eat most of the time a certain amount of muscle, like maybe a pound or 3/4 lbs, and then a less amount of suet or some other fat with it. This is done by eyeball and is probably quite a bit less in weight because fat seems to weigh less than muscle volume for volume, it's probably water content. Then I usually have some fruit with it to make it less boring, like a dozen bite size pieces of pineapple or half a pint of blueberries or a mango cut up into bite size pieces. I can tell this isn't optimal to eat at the same time, I feel just the slightest gassy after wards, but it keeps me on the diet.

I would guess that fat makes up a tiny bit more than 50% of my calories, since the muscle I eat is probably 20% or so fat and then I eat the nearly 100% fat suet. And carbs would be probably 10%, I would be surprised if they were more than that, I haven't crunched the numbers but it's about 2 pieces of fruit a day I eat with 2 lbs or so of muscle and fat, so I would guess that's relatively low in calories comparatively.

Let me get this straight though, you gained weight on zero carb?

[Ioanna]

Let me get this straight though, you gained weight on zero carb?

yep!  is that a first?!? and it's weird too bc i normally have a difficult time gaining or losing weight.  but i tried dropping all carbs which was pretty easy, i had only to eliminate eggs, and the occasional raw milk or raw cheese.  i also had to increase my fat considerably, i think i had it around 30% (definitely  not less though).  i ate only steak or ground meat, everything pan-seared. i had been eating all this stuff raw previously, but i never would eat all the fat.  the pan-searing just made all that fat a little more palatable.  also, i can add that the meat was not grass-fed.  this wasn't available at the time. i dont know if it was water or fat, but i gained weight immediately.  i stuck this out for two weeks to see if this was some adapting thing, but i kept slowly gaining so i stopped.  the added weight came right off when i went back to eating my usual way... TG!  additionally, i had horrible stomach pains. oh, and i was extremely thirsty.  dont know why on that one either. so the whole experience was rather uncomfortable, though not eating carbs was quite easy and i loved what i was eating.

i haven't been raw long enough and when it comes to white meat that's the one thing i still cook, but do you more experienced notice a difference if you eat cooked meat vs being raw for so long?  if so, what?

thanks all!

[Raw Kyle]

Both anecdotally and scientifically gaining weight on zero carbs is rare. Carbs are the best way to gain weight according to science, the glucose combined with fatty acids are what make fats. Well, glycogen, a quick convert. And I've never heard of anyone gaining weight on zero carbs, at least not right away.

I'm not zero carb though and I'm not trying to make anyone else zero carb, it's just surprising.

What kind of model are you? Super heroin?

[Ioanna]

Both anecdotally and scientifically gaining weight on zero carbs is rare. Carbs are the best way to gain weight according to science, the glucose combined with fatty acids are what make fats. Well, glycogen, a quick convert. And I've never heard of anyone gaining weight on zero carbs, at least not right away.

I'm not zero carb though and I'm not trying to make anyone else zero carb, it's just surprising.

I know, I don't get it.  The experience made me so analytical of my food... the TG backbone must be able to come from somewhere other than carbs, then?  I forgot to add that I eat twice a day (that's when I'm hungry) and though I ate to a certain comfort level, I ate a usual amt of calories. I can be so OCD though, so I try not to make to much of a science out of my food.  I just want to make healthy choices when I'm hungry, eat to satiety, and be healthy.  I have no idea what went wrong in my non-carb experience.  Actually, I'm still pretty much without carbs... a few egg yolks once in a while.  So, maybe it was too high fat for me?  But when the fresh berries are out at the farmers markets I'm sure I'll be eating some. That's the only time I eat strawberries, my fave!

What kind of model are you? Super heroin?

Oh, I'm no supermodel or anything.  At 5'7 and 110, I'm too short and fat, lol!  Just local print/commercial stuff.  It seems silly sometimes, but it pays so well and that is helping me through college. I'm into acting really, but that's how I met someone who got me my first job and I've been doing it since. It's funny that it stuck too cuz I'm really shy.

 

[Raw Kyle]

Sounds cool. Super heroin was a joke about your avatar.

I say get a plan and stick to it as best you can for a while and see what happens. If something happens in the short term don't look too much into it unless it's very serious. Then when some time has elapsed, look back and see the big picture. If you change too often the big picture will be unreadable for your benefit.

[William]

Puzzling that anyone can gain on zero carb, the only thing I can think of is that maybe not enough tallow or fat?
I find it impossible to eat too much when it's 80% tallow by calories - it really satisfies.
Maybe if you were to make sure the jerky is really dried to brittle, and use back fat for the tallow. This  seems to have cured the musical tummy for me.

And the meat must be truly raw - never heated over 104°F. I can eat an amazing amount of cooked beef, even when there is the usual amount of fat that butchers leave in it.

[lex_rooker]

Both anecdotally and scientifically gaining weight on zero carbs is rare.

I think this is true for a couple of reasons, the bigest one being that early in our "conversion" we are not fully adapted to efficiently use fat as our fuel and much of it is wasted.  We are most engaged in this adventure in the early days and this is when we are most likely to try the "weight gain vs calories" experiment. The other reason being that we find it difficult to consume enough fat over the long term to support weight gain.

Over the long term, I've found that when percent of calories from fat exceeded 80% then I gained weight. This is documented in my Journal. This is also supported by the recommendations given to people controlling epilepsy through a high fat ketogenic diet.  If they want to gain weight then they must eat well over 80% of their calories as fat. Growing children require 90%+ fat to gain weight. Ground meat labeled 30% fat is 82% calories from fat.

In my journal I speculate as to why ultra high fat will cause weight gain and you can find that here:

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/journals/lex's-journal/msg6654/#msg6654

Lex

[Ioanna]

Thanks Raw Kyle!  You gave great advice as I am not so patient and tend to make changes too quickly.  I look forward to reading about your story in the journal section!

Puzzling that anyone can gain on zero carb, the only thing I can think of is that maybe not enough tallow or fat?
I find it impossible to eat too much when it's 80% tallow by calories - it really satisfies.
Maybe if you were to make sure the jerky is really dried to brittle, and use back fat for the tallow. This  seems to have cured the musical tummy for me.

And the meat must be truly raw - never heated over 104°F. I can eat an amazing amount of cooked beef, even when there is the usual amount of fat that butchers leave in it.

thanks for your response, william!  i don't know, but i think i was eating 80% fat... i wasn't eating very much cuz i would get nauseous from all the fat pretty quickly, especially in the beginning.  maybe you're right though about the meat.  i usually eat it raw, but when i went to zc i pan-seared it for palatability of all that fat. i noticed that pan-searing the meat made me want to eat more than i normally would, so maybe there was some cooking effect here.  i'll try again completely raw as soon as i have a few free weeks to get fat and then thin again, lol.  until then i think i'm going to continue with just raw, grass-fed meat, but back to the way i was before with much less fat. that is satisfying and seems to be working for me for now.

Lex, do you mean that over 80% fat caused weight gain even if total calories were normal or even lower than normal?

[lex_rooker]

Lex, do you mean that over 80% fat caused weight gain even if total calories were normal or even lower than normal?

Yes, that was pretty much my experience.  I really had to drop my food intake and/or increase exercise dramatically (from none to running 2 - 4 miles per day) to keep weight constant.  Weight didn't climb anywhere near the level that carbs would have caused, but I did add about 10 lbs before weight stabilized at the new level.  When I dropped the fat level back to the original level of 68% of calories the weight fell back to normal even when I stopped the exercise.

Lex

[carnivore]

Is it possible that the glucose from Glycerol Phosphate triggers insulin ?
This would explain the weight gain on a very high fat diet.

I think this is true for a couple of reasons, the bigest one being that early in our "conversion" we are not fully adapted to efficiently use fat as our fuel and much of it is wasted.  We are most engaged in this adventure in the early days and this is when we are most likely to try the "weight gain vs calories" experiment. The other reason being that we find it difficult to consume enough fat over the long term to support weight gain.

Over the long term, I've found that when percent of calories from fat exceeded 80% then I gained weight. This is documented in my Journal. This is also supported by the recommendations given to people controlling epilepsy through a high fat ketogenic diet.  If they want to gain weight then they must eat well over 80% of their calories as fat. Growing children require 90%+ fat to gain weight. Ground meat labeled 30% fat is 82% calories from fat.

In my journal I speculate as to why ultra high fat will cause weight gain and you can find that here:

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/journals/lex's-journal/msg6654/#msg6654

Lex

[TylerDurden]

Last summer you put on weight and mentioned having to reduce the fruit.

Fruitarian is not paleo; it is a modern answer just like vegetarianism and all the other diet approaches modern humans choose in order to solve some kind of desire or meaning of life.

http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2009/04/synethesis-of-fat-in-liver.html

Nicola

I was talking about my 100% fruitarian phase - as regards putting on weight last summer, I wasn't eating 100% fruit, then.

[TylerDurden]

You asked what we experience when we switch back to cooked. Basically, my weight goes up like a rocket(even though the cooked food gets poorly absorbed). If I eat cooked animal fat I get a rapid heartbeat and nausea. I'd likely feel worse if I stuck to a cooked diet but I only have the occasional cooked meal here and there for social reasons.

[Ioanna]

You asked what we experience when we switch back to cooked. Basically, my weight goes up like a rocket(even though the cooked food gets poOrly absorbed). If I eat cooked animal fat I get a rapid heartbeat and nausea. I'd likely feel worse if I stuck to a cooked diet but I only have the occasional cooked meal here and there for social reasons.

hmmm, maybe that's part of it... i had been eating raw previously, but went to pan-searing as I stated before so the fat would taste better.  you just reminded me that i also remember my heartbeat elevated when i would eat and the nausea was pretty bad.

if you don't mind my asking, what if you ate a cooked protein that was not so fatty? same symptoms? let's say.... egg whites or chicken breast?  do you notice a difference in digestibility there?

thanks!

[goodsamaritan]

Eating Seared / cooked fat to make it taste initially better makes me feel nauseous.  I can eat lots more raw fat and feel zero nausea.

Eating just cooked protein without fat is so totally undesirable today.  I've got to have my fat or the pure protein just isn't satisfying.  Just like the standard filipino diet I grew up in, every meal had to have rice, lots of rice and some lean meat.  But I don't digest very well on that combination.  But raw fat and raw meat digests oh so fine.

It is the after the raw meal a few minutes and hours later feeling that is so satisfying even if I pig out on raw animal food.  (unlike with cooked food).

You can make yourself some raw mayonnaise so you always have convenient ready fat when your meal is short of fat.

[TylerDurden]

if you don't mind my asking, what if you ate a cooked protein that was not so fatty? same symptoms? let's say.... egg whites or chicken breast?  do you notice a difference in digestibility there?

thanks!

Well, all cooked food takes longer for me to digest so if I eat a lot of it  at the one meal, and I tend to get very slight stomach-pains from most cooked foods(especially if they're filled with preservatives or smoked or similiarly highly  processed).  The stomach-pains are nothing like as painful as they were before I went rawpalaeo, as my digestive system has fully recovered since, it's just that the lack of enzymes is an issue re digestion, causing discomfort.

I don't get the rapid heartbeat reaction from eating non-fatty cooked food such as egg-whites. And there's no equivalent instant nausea as with the cooked fat . I do put on weight, though, with any cooked food, however lean.

Basically, for me , the least worst cooked food is cooked lean muscle-meat from grassfed cattle, and minus preservatives/chemicals. The more processed it is re perservatives and the fattier it is, the more likely I am to suffer from immediate  negative effects.

[lex_rooker]

Is it possible that the glucose from Glycerol Phosphate triggers insulin ?

First, I'm not sure that insulin is absolutely necessary for weight gain.  Nothing I've read says that insulin is "required" to gain weight.  From what I've read, insulin just helps create an environment rich in alph-glycerol-phosphate (agp) as a by-product of glucose metabolism in the presence of insulin.  AGP then forms the nucleus around which triglycerides are built by attaching 3 fatty acid molecules to one agp molecule, and triglycerides are the form fat takes when it is to be stored.  The body can't use triglycerides directly for fuel, it can only store them in fat cells.

My understanding is that the key is the agp molecule - no agp, no ability to form a triglyceride from fatty acids, no fat storage.  I also understand that when fat moves from the fat cells it leaves as triglycerides, then moves to the liver where it is broken down again into 3 free fatty acids and 1 agp molecule.  The 3 free fatty acids can now be used as fuel and the free agp molecue can either be combined with another agp molecule to create one molecule of glucose or combine again with 3 free fatty acid to create another triglyceride molecule to be stored again in the fat cells.  Insulin doesn't need to play a role in this at all.  Its only involvement would be the creation of excess agp molecules when it is used to metabolize high levels of bg due to a high carb intake.

All consumable fat, animal or vegetable, is in the form of triglycerides.  This means it carries its own agp molecules.  I suspect, but don't really know as fact, that when we eat a diet very high in fat, the agp molecules are released along with the fatty acids during the digestion process. Some will surely combine with other agp molecules to create some glucose, but the excess agp could easily provide a source of sufficient agp to combine with the very large fatty acid load from the meal to allow the liver to create new triglycerides to be stored as additional body fat.  In this case the agp molecules were consumed as part of the meal and had nothing to do with insulin or bg levels.

Part of my personal evidence that supports this idea is that my bg actually dropped (10 points or more overall) on the very high fat diet protocol. Even the bg spike after eating my daily meal was lower.  This would make me believe that my body would call for even less insulin than and the previous lower fat protocol, yet I gained weight.  The dietary agp theory would explain this phenomena, but it could also be so much nonsense on my part.  What I do know for a fact is that I gained weight on a very high fat diet over the long term and simultaneously bg dropped.

Lex