BIOHACKING by Nathan Hatch, "F*** Portion Control"
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I don't know enough about Nathan, I joined RPF after he stopped being active. I didn't want to buy his book, but only because I don't know him and his abilities. But when he offered his book for free for a limited time, I passed up on it because I was busy and it was too late when I got freed up.
But Fuck Portion Control is a nice title, as it challenges the status quo. IMHO, it needs an asterisk next to it. Credulous guys like Cirion run amuck in the land of the free* and the brave*, and needed to be saved from the obvious implausibility of advertising with a creative license to do so. Though CICO cannot be disregarded, there is an element of truth to the folly involved in portion control. I eat until I'm full. And I don't exercise and walk a lot. I can understand Ray when he hardly exercises, as there is an opportunity cost to wasting time walking the mandated 10,000 steps a day of a pop culture of horizontally challenged giants fed like factory chickens and pigs.
I have learned a lot from research and experiments and well-reasoned logic from giants that Ray Peat himself gets his ammo to refute the tyranny of conventional wisdom that is ever present that distracts us from absolute truth. And there in fact is absolute truth, when mined among a multitude of fool's gold that keeps us from discovering them.
The literature and academia keeps discovering a new distillation and synthesis of establishes truths, amidst meager funding. Yet it always overwhelmed by what is blessed and sanctioned by institutions. Amidst this, in the absence of a shared set of truths that form a stable foundation of knowledge, one has to dig into his inner wisdom and logic to discern illusion from reality.
I, for one, would like to throw away all that bathwater, for indeed it is mucked up in filth and sewage. But Ibkeep this in my thoughts, for gold is still there but to be mined in my own way. Without having to subject myself to scientism and its evidentiary obstacle course. It is a great weight and even an impossible burden to overcome. Which is why In chose to work mostly alone overcoming what ails me. To argue where words and prose would fail to overcome the decades and even centuries of falsehood masking as irrefutable laws in the pantheons of Hollywood and academia and mass media is a task only the Almighty can render bare and hollow.
I say this because as much as I like to share my findings with others, I will always be taken lightly if not outright refuted, for lacking the requisite proofs. Already, COVID-19 showed us the FDA's outsized influence in shaping policies and actions, with all institutions behind it, to use expensive and maliciously designed trials to disparage and trivialize clinical trials across the world to push vaccines and Paxlovid and the harmful Remdisivir over alternatives such as Ivermectin to a hapless population. What more do I stand a chance? What more do you?
As much as we want to play by the rules, the rules are stacked against us when we have to wait for someone else to do the painstaking research for us. And now that Ray Peat is gone, we have one less giant to ferret out the fool's gold to find gems that form a mosaic of truth to work with. For every time we research ourselves into the available scholarly works, we are overwhelmed by the jingoism and the use of language to confuse us into thinking that it's better to leave it to the "experts," conferred with titles and degrees, to lead us out of perdition. It is not worth it to bury ourselves in researching the studies, when we can't really trust the veracity of these sources, as funded by impure motives. Thus, if we go through the straight and narrow, we likely will find no answers but keep living in the hope that continuing research will lead us to the land of milk and honey.
Our search will thus take an analogous and parallel route to our search in spirituality, to soldier on with hope- guided by the medical and pharma experts, just as much as we are guided by religion and the salvation of end times.
I say, keep experimenting on yourself. Believe what you discover yourself firsthand, for there is really no alternative that can be better.
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@yerrag Well said my friend. We see eye to eye. As for CICO, I'm testing that theory. So far, (7 weeks in) no extra weight, feels like loss (I never weigh) but some probable redistribution. My husband says he is losing. Tbh, I'm working on metabolism first. Once that's fully restored I think the extra bit of weight may take care of itself.
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@S-Holmes @yerrag I've read that de novo lipogenesis can produce only 5g of fat daily, so on a hypothetical carb-only diet one would gain at most 1.5kg of fat in a year. Whereas fat is much more difficult for the body to use ("the fat you eat is the fat you carry"). Is CICO, then completely useless for diets where majority of calories comes from carbs or fat?
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@zawisza I don't know the answer to that question. I'm testing it out now, but am only about 2 months in so far.
I have always been thin. Then, pufas, stress, and illness caught up with me and I started to gradually gain weight. (I'm still thinner than most women over 50, but I would feel better carrying around less.) If stress hormones are the primary cause of weight gain, then it makes sense to do everything possible to reduce them. When you haven't eaten in a while, your body compensates by releasing those hormones. That's why Nathan says eating something (organic and no pufas) every 2 to 3 hours is imperative. He also says if you wait until you're hungry, it's too late. The stress of hunger has already triggered their release.
The experiment continues.
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Another thing to consider is that when you increase your metabolic rate you will use up nutrients faster. I developed a very sore area on my gums after my temperature dramatically improved. I then did vit C loading , to bowel tolerance (24 grams in a day was my limit). The sore spot is gone.
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To a certain extent CICO works. But only when it's an apples to apples comparison. The apple to me is metabolism. For a given low metabolic state, where usually one tends to get overweight/obese, lowering intake will see lower weight. The same would apply when one is constant in having high metabolism.
But when one changes his metabolic health and his internal metabolism improves, changing a low metabolism to high internal metabolism, CICO would have less effect or even be irrelevant.
It's a pain in the ass to be constantly watching your caloric intake. It's not even natural. Were humans helpless before weighing scales were invented? No, but they just eat when hungry, and atop eating when sated. But those humans are typical of their times, where they don't rely on the false god of medical science to tell them how and what to eat. False gods run amuck, especially in the gamed American system.
The system is so bad it has spawned an entire industry (or a set of industries) where people work out regularly at gyms to shed weight. Increasing external metabolism to compensate for low internal metabolism. Activities to develop the brain, like reading and composing music and writing, take less of their time because they waste their time working out. Or walking the stupid 10,000/steps.
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@zawisza said in BIOHACKING by Nathan Hatch, "F*** Portion Control":
@S-Holmes @yerrag I've read that de novo lipogenesis can produce only 5g of fat daily, so on a hypothetical carb-only diet one would gain at most 1.5kg of fat in a year. Whereas fat is much more difficult for the body to use ("the fat you eat is the fat you carry"). Is CICO, then completely useless for diets where majority of calories comes from carbs or fat?
I don't know about the veracity of the 5g/ day limit to de novo lipogenesis, but even if that were true, a lot of extra body weight can be in the form of water. Perhaps obesity has a lot to do with edema that appears normal because we are used to seeing overweight and obesity and that state is an expression that also accompanies an imbalance that really is edema.
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@S-Holmes said in BIOHACKING by Nathan Hatch, "F*** Portion Control":
@zawisza I don't know the answer to that question. I'm testing it out now, but am only about 2 months in so far.
I have always been thin. Then, pufas, stress, and illness caught up with me and I started to gradually gain weight. (I'm still thinner than most women over 50, but I would feel better carrying around less.) If stress hormones are the primary cause of weight gain, then it makes sense to do everything possible to reduce them. When you haven't eaten in a while, your body compensates by releasing those hormones. That's why Nathan says eating something (organic and no pufas) every 2 to 3 hours is imperative. He also says if you wait until you're hungry, it's too late. The stress of hunger has already triggered their release.
The experiment continues.
Nathan treats his experience in his context as applicable to all, and in his advice to graze (is eat every 2-3 hours) does not apply at all to me. As well to a lot of people who have stable blood sugar maintained at optimal levels by the body. I eat only 3x a day, as tradition has determined long ago. And when I fast, I don't get stressed either. Normal and stable blood sugar is a key to that. But this state is the result of a body in balance.
Of course, to a certain extent I will be stressed when I fast beyond what my body can bear. At which point, I stop my fast. The body knows. We have to obey the body. When you are hungry, you can eat. But eating every 2 to 3 hours without any reason just because Nathan says so? No. He is just assuming everyone is like him, who gets stressed because likely his blood sugar is not stable and yoyos. If that is the case with you, you can do what he does as a temporary solution but you don't want to be in that state. You have to find out why your blood sugar is not stable and fix it.
I've been through that. And it has made a whole world of a difference. It isn't rocket science, as you will find out. It may be in some ways though, as sifting thru the piles of commercially-driven garbage research littering the landscape to find the truly helpful solutions can be mind-blowing. You hear one expert say this, and another say something totally contradictory, and you experience this day in and day out in a media barrage of YouTube videos from experts and social media posts,as well as books, newspapers, magazines - you can't go into a zen mode of seeking truth anymore.
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@yerrag I do nothing simply because a guru said to do it. I try things and if they work I continue. If they don't work, I move on. Our recovering metabolism proves this works for us. I can't speak for anyone else. Nothing else was helping and I suspect many others find themselves with swinging or low temperatures. My primary goal was to raise my temp/metabolism by any means possible. So far so good.
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@S-Holmes Great. I don't remember though specifically taegetting you for following a guru. If you had taken it that way, I apologize. Many people like gurus to do the thinking for them. In some ways, I can be like that. Especially when that guru has establishes a lot of credibility with me.
The reason I subscribe to Ray's newsletters is one example of that. But Ray has cleared the bar for me, though I acknowledge he is human and can be wrong.
But Ray isn't bellicose like the Garrett thug. But I needed to point out that grazing is not applicable to all people, and Nathan, according to you, recommend everyone practice grazing.
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@yerrag Many of Nathan's strategies are for the metabolically challenged. That would be many, if not most people. Some will not need to follow his advice, but I'm guessing most who are on health forums are looking for solutions to their health issues.
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His advice may be for the metabolically challenged, but am I wrong to think that he does little to disabuse the notion that the need to graze is merely a coping mechanism to deal with poor blood sugar regulation out of being in a metabolically challenged state? Many people would just be content to stay that way because they think they are naturally disposed to be that way, and so they don't seek a real solution anymore and stay sub-optimal where health is concerned. Thus, they are unaware of their own false helplessness.
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@yerrag People make a lot of assumptions about Nathan's advice. I can't explain everything in bits and pieces that took him 500 pages of writing to explain.
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@S-Holmes My bad. My mistake is to assume based on what you said about him. Since you've read him fully, you must know how to put his statements in the fully rounded context, and not in sound bites.
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@yerrag I started this thread to get feedback from others who have tried his methods. Not too interested in trying to sell people on them. I just really don't have time. I've spent all day (week actually) working to get petitions signed and people to commit to not signing leases turning my county into a wind turbine nightmare. I'll be working on this until we lose or they're run out of town. But that's another story
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I hope you can make things work out and get the wind turbines from destroying your way of life, especially when moving away from the city to get some peace and quiet is your goal.
Nathan doesn't get everything right. No one does, not even Ray. I don't want to troll anyone least of all you, nor keep you from your priorities, but I had to say something about what you shared about Nathan's view on grazing. I've also said enough about it. If you prefer not to be bothered about it, I will respect that.
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@S-Holmes said in BIOHACKING by Nathan Hatch, "F*** Portion Control":
I've spent all day (week actually) working to get petitions signed and people to commit to not signing leases turning my county into a wind turbine nightmare. I'll be working on this until we lose or they're run out of town.
Bullshit will only change form until the emperors balls are cut off. It's possible we all harbour an inherent subconscious aversion to doing this.
@ThinPicking said in New "Mission" of RPF:
(That's a campaign, not the campaign. Simply talking about it will probably do the trick.)
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@yerrag The turbines kill so many birds and bats. They're making people sick and causing farm animals to die. They shed pfas from blades that spin at speeds of 100 mph, and people need to learn about the dangers of "infrasound." NO ONE should be within 3 miles of those things. People want to move but their property values plummet so they're sick, broke, and stuck.
I do respect your opinions and experience, but will need to table theorizing about the viability of his strategies. I would however still like to hear from others who have read his book and tried out his recommendations.
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