Since someone took the time to mention in a comment that he found this blog because of my croissant diet post …
It’s been over a year now and yes. I think there’s something to it.
As I mentioned in my first post, if you ran into me you probably wouldn’t think “overweight,” but my entire life I’ve had a tendency to put on extra pounds. As I’ve gotten older especially, I’ve floated at the upper end of what would be considered a good weight (based on hip:waist ratio).
I’ve kept things under control by watching carbs, periodic keto, and intermittent fasting. I work out (lift heavy things) twice a week and am fairly active otherwise. I use a standing desk to write.
But in 2018-19, everything stopped working as well. It seemed harder and harder to keep those few extra pounds from creeping back on.
So when I learned about the croissant diet, I thought, “hmmm.” Brad seems smart. He looks at the science. As a keto-literate person, I’m not shy about ingesting fats, but the more I dug into Brad’s blog posts, the more I started wondering if my issue was the kind of fats I was eating.
Keto/primal typically gives the green light to olive and avocado oils. And yes, unless you are scrupulous about keeping a food diary or updating a tracker app, it’s hard to attribute weight gain to diet with any real precision. But I was eating a LOT of monosaturated fats. Half an avocado nearly every day for breakfast, cooking with avocado oil, drenching salads in olive oil. All good for you, right?
I was eating a lot of bacon.
So I made the switch. Quit those oils entirely for several months. Cut way back on bacon (I know — eep). Cut back on chicken and pork, and when I did serve them, I’d cook them in generous amounts of butter or beef tallow. (Memory: my grandfather adding a little real sugar to his coffee after the saccharine “to take the devil out.”)
Began dousing vegetables liberally with butter and/or tallow. Started snacking on butter. See pic :)
And guys, something started going right with all this. I am down several pounds from my peak 2019 weight, and I seem to be stabilized. I’m not struggling to keep it off.
I still do all the other things I’ve been doing all along. I do a 20-24 hour fast 2-4 times/month. I don’t gorge on carbs, but I also don’t avoid them entirely. I eat bread once in a while. I eat popcorn (with butter!) once in a while. I drink beer once in a while, although I’m careful with that, favoring tequila neat or dirty gin martinis :)
Your mileage may vary.
But I’m in. And psyched that Brad is now raising low-PUFA pork. It’s about time someone did — I’ve been worried about the fat profile of chicken and pork for a long time (ICYMI, they’re both fed grains, so even organic versions tend to be high PUFA).
Firebrand Meats CSA/subscription here.
And I’m almost afraid to do this, because I’d rather hoard this find to myself … but the crackers in the photo at the top of this post? The are called Finn Crisps, and I found them after hunting for a store-bought cracker, any store-bought cracker, that’s not made with industrial seed oils. If you buy a case of nine boxes on Amazon the cost is under $3/box. So, not too bad. And the ingredients: rye flour, water, salt, yeast.
Nice crunchy vehicle for those slabs of butter :)
Interesting! Do you think your macro position changed? Are you eating more fat with this approach, or do you think you just substituted CFA for MUFA?
Hi, Aaron, thanks for commenting. If I had to guess, I’d say subbing CFA for MUFA is the relevant factor. The other aspects of my diet have been pretty consistent for a good ten years at this point. I’m definitely not eating *fewer* carbs.
Unfortunately I rarely track macros with anything approaching discipline so am hesitant to guess about whether I eat more fat. I definitely eat more than people who’ve been taught to be nervous about it :)
Streit’s organic matzos are also no MUFA/PUFA – and delish slathered with butter and gouda! Thank you for your update….
Wow that does sound very very good!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are you still losing? Are you still eating “TCD” way? I want to try but I’m wondering how long to give it a true try.
Yes, I am still eating TCD. I now eat bacon and olive oil occasionally (when I first started I cut both out completely for a month or two). But otherwise, I eat like I described in the post.
I’m not sure how to answer your question “are you still losing?”. The real benefit of this adjustment, for me, has been that it solved the opposite problem, meaning, I don’t have an issue with pounds creeping back on that I had before. I also look to weight/hip ratio more than weight, since I lift heavy things 2x a week and am slowly getting stronger, so presumably I’m putting more muscle on over time. Right now my waist is the smallest it’s been since I started tracking it 7 years ago.
As far as giving it a true try, it’s a delicious way to eat. Just saying :)
I think Wasa Bread would work fine, too, and it’s right in the super market. Problem with that, though…the sweetness of the rye crisp coupled with the saltiness of the butter makes it very easy to over consume!
Yes, I think Wasa might be very similar to Finn crisps.
I don’t worry about overconsuming though, as long as it’s a vehicle for lots and lots of butter :)
Finn Crisp! Yes! I’ve been eating them for many years. With liberal slabs of unsalted Kerrygold, they’re great. I too get them from Amazon, though they are carried by health food stores here and there.
:)
Hello Kirsten! What an interesting read is your blog. Can you please tell me were you always able to handle wheat well? I listen to a lot of podcasts with Brad and read his blog thoroughly. But there are no mentions of wheat or ubiqutous nowdays gluten intolerance. Quite keen to try this way of eating (hardly can call it a diet since it’s used to be a norm a few decades ago and it is very enjoyable :) but i am forever worried about wheat and waht it does to my gut. I absolutely love crossants.
Pleaae share your thoughts ..
Hi, Dixie! Thanks for your comment.
Funny you should ask about wheat. I have had issues with sensitivity to it. I have coped with this in the somewhat-distant past by either avoiding it entirely or avoiding eating it multiple days in a row. Put another way, at one point if I were to eat, say, bread every day for four or five days, I’d develop digestive issues. But if I ate it one day and took a break and then ate it again, I seemed to do fine.
That said, I put that in the past tense because I seem to be less sensitive now than I was years ago (meaning when my diet was closer to SAD and I ate multiple servings of grains every single day without fail). So I could probably eat it multiple days in a row, now, and be fine.
The rye crisp crackers don’t seem to bother me. Anecdotally, some people seem to observe that wheat grown in Europe doesn’t bother them as much as wheat grown in the US.
When I make my own bread products at home, I use Einkhorn flour. It’s a little odd and expensive but I like the flavor.
If I had to guess, I’d say that my body does best, in general, when I periodically change things up — i.e. give it a rest from any sort of food that I otherwise tend to eat habitually. I base this in part on my experience with wheat. I also fast occasionally and I’m currently doing a month of strict keto — annual January thing, our 3rd year now. Keto is a mild stressor for sure, but I feel like it serves as a metabolic and probably gut microbiome reset. Had a few slightly rough days the first week, but on day 11 today and feeling superhuman.
I would also guess that at least some distress “caused” by wheat is microbiome related. Whether the mechanism is “overgrowth” or “die offs” is impossible to know, but I’m of the opinion that a lot of what we’re doing when we eat is not feeding ourselves, but feeding all our little friends inside. There’s some speculation that issues with wheat are actually the effects of glysophate, which farmers use not just as weedkiller but to artificially “ripen”/dry wheat to simplify harvesting schedules. It seems plausible to me. Glysophate has antibiotic properties. How crazy would it be if eating wheat, esp conventionally grown, bothers us not because of the wheat but because we’re inadvertently consuming traces of a chemical that kills off gut bugs…
Bottom line, I don’t have any certain answers, but I definitely went from “best to avoid wheat” to “okay in moderation,” and it seems to work for me.
As a vehicle for butter, bread/crackers/savory pastries have no equal… although radishes and a little salt is very nice, too :)
Hi Kirsten,
Like you, I had been consuming a lot of olive/avocado, the fruit as well as the oils. I’ve avoided all other vegetable and seed oils for years, and have used bacon grease, lard, and tallow for cooking oils. I occasionally do 24-hour fasts and intermittent fast (but not consistently). I’m not a big consumer of sugar or tons of carbs. I would say I’m paleo-keto-ish. :-)
I would like to know when you began to see changes in your belly fat. I haven’t seen any so far, and I have been avoiding olive/avocado oil and pork fat for about a month now.
Hi, Patricia, thanks for commenting.
Sounds like we are tracking very closely in terms of our diet history!
Brad posted on Twitter wrt a study suggesting that it takes a bit of time for the fat we have stored in our bodies to turn over in composition. https://twitter.com/fire_bottle/status/1338926216921878529
Assuming Brad’s model is correct, like hogs raised on conventional feed, we humans are carrying around a lot of PUFAs in our stored fat. And apparently it can take quite a long time for our bodies to replace those PUFAs with saturated fats.
When I started my minimal-PUFA trial, I was at the upper edge of the range of optimal body fat, per the calculators available online (height, weight, age, waist-to-hip ratio). So maybe around 20% body fat?
I posted my update a year and a half later. I was seeing some changes to my waist-to-hip ratio before that, but I didn’t want to post until I was pretty confident that this is all real and not a random fluctuation of some kind.
So assuming you are starting at about the same percentage of body fat that I did, I would say a month is probably not long enough.
Being as I am an older female and haven’t had a super-flat tummy since before puberty, I am not expecting washboard abs in my lifetime. But I also feel no need to parade about in a bikini so I’m cool with that :)
And my current annual month-o-keto has been the most effective to date as far as impact on body composition. I’m having very little discomfort and am pretty confident I’m on track to achieve a new, lower range for my weight set-point, which isn’t a “must have” goal for me but a nice target for a personal science experiment :)
Thanks, that’s helpful! I’m an older female as well (starting to get Medicare junk mail!), and I feel the same way about my tummy. I would just like to look down and see my entire lap, lol.