Hans, when you eat cheese, is this like the main course of your meal?

 

Do you eat this plain or do you have recipes or different ways to prepare it?

 

I'm looking for ways to increase my cheese consumption while lowering my meat consumption for health reasons.

 

I'm also looking to lose a few pounds of fat while hopefully adding some muscle but trying to eat healthy (according the to high sat. fat, low PUFA protocol espoused here, on Ray Peat's site, AV-Skeptics, etc.) really flies in the face of what is typically recommended for weight loss.

 

I love cheese melted on various foods but I guess that would defeat the purpose, huh?

 

I was looking for information on dairy consumption in different countries, especially in France, and I found that the French had one of the highest butter and cheese consumption rates but they were one of the lowest in actual milk consumption, which I found quite interesting.

 

Thanks Hans,

 

Will

Thanks for the response Hans.

 

From that, I take it that heating the cheese causes anything detrimental to the cheese which is good news for me.

 

I am going to try the ricotta cheese recipe but I'll probably have that with some sprouted breda instead of pasta because a pasta meal makes me fatigued to the point where I HAVE to sleep right after eating and then when I wake up, I feel like my eyes are swollen shut.

 

A smaller amount of pasta or more of another starchy carb will give me horrible bags under my eyes when I wake up the following morning...weird.

Well, I'll try to be brief and complete at the same time (doesn't always work!).

 

I grew up on CapNCrunch and other disasterous cereals and foods.  My mom would start dinner at 4:45 and dinner would be on the table at 5:00, so you can imagine the instant crap that we ate (BTW both of my parents have passed away from different cancers...never made it out their 60's).

 

I was always a gluttonous eater, always finishing everything at every meal...I would take 10 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school for lunch when I took my lunch and when I ate the school lunch, I would order 2 lunches...I could eat 10 McD's cheeseburgers but I would regularly eat around 6.

 

Funny thing is, I was always skinny and got picked on, so I started lifting weights in the 5th grade and by 8th grade I never got picked on again. I enjoyed working out so I ran and worked out all the time so I never had to worry about getting fat from eating so much. I wrestled in high school and took a few martial arts too.

 

At 20 yo, I went to the family doc for a checkup and my blood pressure was 180/100 and he was going to put me on meds. Instead I quit McD's and the other fast food places and got it down to a reasonable level to be able to avoid the meds.

 

About 5 yrs ago, while in grad school, working full-time, family etc., I was getting a little heavy but not really able to undertake any kind of training to lose the weight, I stumbled across the Warrior Diet (1 large meal a day) and then intermittent fasting.  I lost a good bit of weight doing this over the course of 3 of the last 5 years. I'm going to be 42 next month).

 

Everything was going OK but then my weight and bodyfat started creeping up again.  I started putting in my food intake into the CRON-O-METER which is a diet tracker program that you can get online for free and I was only eating about 1500 calories a day.  I started looking things up and doing some testing on myself and I had almost every symptom of hypothyroidism. I emailed Ray Peat and he gave me some good advice like eating more frequently, consuming milk and OJ, consuming gelatinous broths, not avoiding carbs, etc. 

 

I asked him about pregnenolone and he said that he used it and it appeared to be safe, so I started taking that. I have my morning temperature up to around 97.4 to 97.7F which is probably just above what indicates hypothyroidism, (it had been in the 96's and was very erratic which indicates an adrenal weakness, so your assessment that my body was being overstressed would seem quite accurate) so I'm doing better now.

 

But now after going from one 1500 calorie meal to eating throughout the day, I'm almost 200 pounds (192 to 196)...I was about 177 in Feb of this year. I'm in kind of a state of confusion as to how to lose the weight. Ray Peat says not to go low-carb because it's not good for your thyroid but when I was a low-carb guy, I used to carry 6% to 10% bodyfat without any trouble at all.  I tried the bodybuilders kind of diet, eating every 3 hours, low fat, mod protein, hi carb but I didn't feel good and I couldn't let go of my beliefs that saturated fat is best, MUFAs are good, and restrict PUFAs, so I couldn't fully immerse myself into that diet anyhow.

 

I'm wandering aimlessly, diet-wise, right now, eating eggs or raising bran or oatmeal for breakfast, a meat, carrots, and some type of potato for dinner, and previous day's leftovers and fruit or macadamia nuts in between. I would like to reduce my meat intake and increase my fruit intake (low meat, high fruit has been associated with a reduced incidence of polyps according to a study from UNC State, http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/137/4/999 , my mom died of colorectal cancer) but I don't know how that will work with muscle building and fat loss. According to "The Fiber Menace" maybe I'm not doing the best thing by eating oatmeal or raisin bran. Right now, I'm lost.

 

I haven't eaten pasta in a LONG time so I couldn't tell you how I would respond to it now.

 

So much for brevity...thanks.

My biggest problem is hypothyroid, not diagnosed by a doctor, but by symptom and self testing (morning temperature which I take every day). I believe that I also have weak adrenals (self tested by shining a light onto the side of the eye in a dark room and if the pupils constrict and then open up or fluctuate between open and constricted, your adrenals are considered weak).  I got much of this from http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/?PHPSESSID=adb682cfafb4f96eab854f86df74d1a9 , which is a great resource for hypothyroidism. Pretty much all of the symptoms that go along with hypothyroidism such as fatique, weight gain, brain fog, muscle weakness (lost strength in my weight training workouts, inability to complete workouts), etc., although I have been working on the hypothyroidism and the symptoms are slightly better.

 

The last couple of trips to the doctor I had normal blood pressure for the first time in my life: usually 145/85 but those past two visits were 120/80. But my cholesterol was now high. It had been around 210 to 225 but this last time it was closer to 300 (I believe that I read in a Ray Peat article that high cholesterol was actually diagnostic of hypothyroidism).

 

Since my doc is a cardiologist, he was thrilled that my blood pressure was actually 120/80.

 

That seems to be the bulk of it.

 

I have abandoned the bodybuilder diet because I felt bad and have gone back to a higher fat diet (ex: this morning 3 fried eggs in coconut oil, 8 oz of OJ not from concentrate, lunch, some leftover steak, about 3 oz., some pineapple, and a square of Lindt dark chocolate 70%, and a couple of handfulls of macadamia nuts), so this is how I'm eating in the interim for now.  I feel better eating this way than the former.

 

Thanks for taking the time Hans.

 

Will

I was hesitant to get into the thyroid discussion with my doc after reading so many horror stories about blood tests not being accurate for thyroid diagnosis, docs unwilling to prescribe Armour Thyroid based on these inaccurate test results, etc.

 

I guess that I'll have that discussion with my doc at my next appointment coming up in a month or so.

 

Thanks Hans.

Thanks for that website...I saved that one in my favorites!

 

Thanks Hans!