- Joined
- Oct 30, 2015
- Messages
- 820
There is nothing special about croissants other than they are a good vehicle for carrying SF. The diet was modeled after the French, so it was just a cheeky nod to that. The prime tenants of the diet is to remove PUFA, and increase long chain SF. As far as ratio's go they were not suggested, those were my own. I just started with a base of around 0.8 grams of protein per lb of lean body weight. The mechanism as it is explained (and this surely isn't Peaty at all) is that longer chain SF like palmitic (16 carbon) and stearic (18 carbon) over run the electron transport chain of the mitochondria and cause reverse electron transport. You can find out more about that on Brad's website fireinabottle.net. Without getting into the science, what happens is you wind up burning a lot more fat, particularly around the middle. This was true for me and numerous people I helped. I was a size 36 waist for at least 20 years, occasionally dipping down to a 35/34 with various practices. On the croissant diet I dropped down to a size 32 which is a bit loose and have maintained that for 6 months after loosing all the weight I wanted to lose.
As for the calorie reduction this was my own idea as well. From prior experience in competing in bodybuilding many years ago (25y) and at a very amateur and local level. I just felt a mild calorie restriction was in order to kick start it and to prevent hormones crashing from excess stress . The first few weeks I actually exceeded my maintenance calories by quite a bit and still lost (obviously my metabolic rate increased or I would not have been able to lose). I have seen this with others too, but it is short lived in my experience. I think getting rid of the PUFA allowed my thyroid to work and likely mine and others go a little hyper once the PUFA was removed but this seems to be short lived. This is only a guess, or a way for me to wrap my head around what happened. It seems people I have helped have had more success than others I hear form online who have tried it, so likely there is something to the ratio's and mild calorie reduction. Also everyone is in their own unique metabolic state, which is likely why it may not have worked for some.
I noticed and many others too that the weight can come off quick at first, then you hit a stall, just stick with it and weight will start dropping again, albeit slower than in the beginning for most. When people hit a stall I have routinely suggested they eat a couple more tablespoons of butter for a few days on top of what they have been eating, in almost all cases this results in them starting to drop weight again. It is crazy and seems counterintuitive but that has been my experience.
I can be found on YouTube by searching for Dave Fit, or Croissant diet.
While I was doing the diet people were asking lots of questions which caused me to dig in and research to try and give them the best answers I could. At first I was definitely convinced that PUFA's made you fat. Later after watching Dr. Chris Knobe, and Tucker Carlson I began to think PUFA's were toxic. This lead me to Dr. Peat. since all of this diet is based around the mitochondria and how different substrates effect it. The more I read and watched the more the whole bioenergetic view made sense. Because I was drinking from a fire hose, listening to every Peat interview I could, reading all of his posts, and found Danny Roddy as well as @haidut Georgi Dinkov, my view on a lot of this has changed. Not that the diet doesn't work, it most certainly does for many, but that once I lost the weight I wanted to increase my carbs and lower my Fat intake. So for the past 6 months I have basically replaced a large portion of my fat intake with simple sugars. I was already a huge advocate of getting your micros from food (eggs, liver, oysters etc.), so this wasn't an issue. I will point out the croissant diet isn't fully Peaty imho but many parts of it are. Oddly I was already eating baby carrots daily before finding RP.
I see people saying that starch and fat make you fat. Here is the question I have with that, the statement singles out a carbohydrate type (starch) but leaves the fat type open. I would ask do you think poly, mono, or saturated make you fat? Then more specifically which SF if they believe that SF does too? I saw a mouse study where they fed obesogenic mice (they have to be, apparently it's really tough to make a regular mouse fat) different fat types, one group was fed 30% of their diet Polyunsaturated fat (soybean oil), one was fed 30% monounsaturated (olive oil), and one was fed 30% saturated (stearic acid). At the end of the study the soy fed mice looked like obese balloons, the olive oil mice were a little fatter than before they started, and the stearic acid fed mice were extremely lean. This was an isocaloric study where they all got the same diet and same calories with only the fat substrate changed. I read that whole study almost 8 months ago, looked at all the pictures, graphs, etc. I have yet to be able to locate the study again. I am actually planning to repeat the study just for my own edification just to see if I can duplicate the results.
Anyway I hope this helps.
~David
I gained 2 pounds since starting on this approach 2 weeks ago or so. I am kind of discouraged.