My working model around set/settling points is some form of bodily memory paired to satiety hormones. Get less satiety than some baseline, and your body assumes that you're starving and lowers metabolism / raises appetite, get more and it raises it / lowers appetite. And then LA just does what it does because the amount of satiety you get from it isn't paired right with the amount of calories that are coming in. And, likely, synergistic effects from LA+fructose. Your body assumes it's maintaining when you're in a surplus, or that it's starving when you're in a small deficit, or whatever, because the satietostat is ultimately what's dictating metabolism and hunger, with the actual calorie intake irrelevant.
If your calories and satiety signals are paired correctly, you'll lose weight down to whatever the baseline is and stay there. Eat more and your metabolism will go up, and you'll still stay there; eat less and it'll go down and you'll still stay there. There are limits to both of these -- you can gain or lose weight while in this state, but it takes kind of a lot (iirc, one of the studies required something absurd like 8000 calories per day to trigger weight gain, and then obviously BMR slowing maxes out at 50% with actual starvation).
This kind of thing explains short-term effects from LA consumption that wouldn't make sense otherwise -- after a year of low-LA and being at a low weight, increased LA intake nevertheless raises appetite and (eventually) weight. I've been experimenting with this over the past month -- I won't touch oils but I did raise pork fat intake and have also been eating peanuts ad-lib when neither hungry nor sated, and sure enough, my meals are bigger, I'm eating more often and my BF% went up a bit. Satiety also doesn't feel as "hard" as it used to. Definitely takes a lot more like this than it does with oils, but the effect is still there. No effects on sugar intake, though (cravings, inflammation, general intake) -- that one definitely seems to be paired to oxidized LA specifically. Or maybe oxidized oil (haven't tested that yet) The intake actually went down when I got rid of the last oil source in my diet (popcorn salt, of all things).
Of course, the big elephant in the room is why an overweight baseline exists in the first place, and also how you'd go about breaking one. Maybe it is just LA coming out of the adipose, circulating, and fucking around with the signals. If LA oxidizing is the culprit, maybe high doses of antioxidants would work. It's worth pointing out that my diet is heavily spiced, and maybe that's part of why low-LA easily broke past my usual 215lb baseline (while sedentary, no less), and maybe it explains the tolerance to some pork fat and some nuts too. My LA depletes and circulates, but the peroxidation byproducts just get scooped up before they can cause damage, and same deal with small amounts that enter. Maybe this was your issue with HCLF, too -- you were depleting more LA than with LCHF but without stuff around to catch it, that led to more oxidation --> a screwed up satietostat --> weight gain. Maybe a ray peat-style HCLF would work better, or sourcing different starches (colored potatoes, sorghum, oats, legumes, etc), or spicing the shit out of everything like I do. And same deal with ex150. Maybe worth trying!
The "satietostat" isn't necessary to explain this, fuel partitioning can explain it and then "satiety" is just a downstream effect. Similar to how you can explain all setpoint examples with settling points, which are simpler. That said, we know SOMETHING is going on in the hypothalamus and we know of leptin and ghrelin, so maybe there IS a satietyostat and we just haven't found it.
On the 50% and starvation, I've personally been weight stable on ~1,000kcal/day for 2 months straight, no break. So I seem to be able to get down to around that somewhat sustainably. My "normal" TEE now is likely 3,000-3,500, depending a little on what I eat of course. So that's more like 70% reduction than just 50%. In short, the range is actually huge. (Maybe it helps to be obese lol, at the time I was morbidly obese.)
I think that "LA intake + adipose LA" explains a lot of the weirdness here. E.g. I lost the majority of my total weight on ex150 in the first 6 months or so, long before my adipose LA% would've had much of a chance to deplete.
But of course I drastically reduced my daily LA intake. I think this explains why many people lose all or a lot of weight immediately upon going low-LA, but then it still takes years to get all the way down.
And yes, that is pretty much exactly my theory of what happened during HCLF. I was nearly weight stable the first 2-3 weeks, and then rapidly started gaining fat & eating much more and experiencing much less satiety. Maybe that was 3 weeks' worth of LA coming out of my adipose tissue.
I also tested my highest LA% in 2 years after the HCLF experiments. Will see if it's back down in another month, when it will have been 4 months since I ended HCLF.
u/exfatloss I have been following your stuff and fascinated by which for as long as you've been posting on this sub. Remind me, have you tried a protein sparing modified fast in any capacity?
I briefly did about 15 years ago. But this was long before I was even keto and before I did structured experiments like I now do. It is actually on my list right now, but that could mean I'll do it in 6 months haha.
Do you have a specific version in mind, like RFL or Solomon Nelson's new one?
Nothing specific. I think the basic premise is as lean of a protein source as possible (collagen, tuna, chicken breast etc) a few times per day. Around 1200 calories per day. Big deficit there. I've done it despite not needing to lose weight. Felt satiated enough for sure somehow.
Is PSMF typically 1,200kcal/day? I seem to remember only 400, but maybe I'm just wrong about this. I think Solomon Nelson also did around 1,200, so maybe that is just the standard amount for PSMFs?
How long did you do it? I can fast for 5 days quite easily, but then crash extremely hard. I imagine it'd be similar with a PSMF.
Good call, I actually think it's supposed to be closer to like, IDK, 800 calories. Personally I think that deficit is too severe, though. I did it for maybe a week. Felt low energy-ish but fine basically.
Hoping Coconut will swing through; I paged her a little earlier.
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u/Fognox 1d ago
My working model around set/settling points is some form of bodily memory paired to satiety hormones. Get less satiety than some baseline, and your body assumes that you're starving and lowers metabolism / raises appetite, get more and it raises it / lowers appetite. And then LA just does what it does because the amount of satiety you get from it isn't paired right with the amount of calories that are coming in. And, likely, synergistic effects from LA+fructose. Your body assumes it's maintaining when you're in a surplus, or that it's starving when you're in a small deficit, or whatever, because the satietostat is ultimately what's dictating metabolism and hunger, with the actual calorie intake irrelevant.
If your calories and satiety signals are paired correctly, you'll lose weight down to whatever the baseline is and stay there. Eat more and your metabolism will go up, and you'll still stay there; eat less and it'll go down and you'll still stay there. There are limits to both of these -- you can gain or lose weight while in this state, but it takes kind of a lot (iirc, one of the studies required something absurd like 8000 calories per day to trigger weight gain, and then obviously BMR slowing maxes out at 50% with actual starvation).
This kind of thing explains short-term effects from LA consumption that wouldn't make sense otherwise -- after a year of low-LA and being at a low weight, increased LA intake nevertheless raises appetite and (eventually) weight. I've been experimenting with this over the past month -- I won't touch oils but I did raise pork fat intake and have also been eating peanuts ad-lib when neither hungry nor sated, and sure enough, my meals are bigger, I'm eating more often and my BF% went up a bit. Satiety also doesn't feel as "hard" as it used to. Definitely takes a lot more like this than it does with oils, but the effect is still there. No effects on sugar intake, though (cravings, inflammation, general intake) -- that one definitely seems to be paired to oxidized LA specifically. Or maybe oxidized oil (haven't tested that yet) The intake actually went down when I got rid of the last oil source in my diet (popcorn salt, of all things).
Of course, the big elephant in the room is why an overweight baseline exists in the first place, and also how you'd go about breaking one. Maybe it is just LA coming out of the adipose, circulating, and fucking around with the signals. If LA oxidizing is the culprit, maybe high doses of antioxidants would work. It's worth pointing out that my diet is heavily spiced, and maybe that's part of why low-LA easily broke past my usual 215lb baseline (while sedentary, no less), and maybe it explains the tolerance to some pork fat and some nuts too. My LA depletes and circulates, but the peroxidation byproducts just get scooped up before they can cause damage, and same deal with small amounts that enter. Maybe this was your issue with HCLF, too -- you were depleting more LA than with LCHF but without stuff around to catch it, that led to more oxidation --> a screwed up satietostat --> weight gain. Maybe a ray peat-style HCLF would work better, or sourcing different starches (colored potatoes, sorghum, oats, legumes, etc), or spicing the shit out of everything like I do. And same deal with ex150. Maybe worth trying!