I published Introducing The Croissant Diet (TCD) on December 3rd and it’s now the 14th so there hasn’t been a ton of time for people to experiment, but I’m getting a lot of feedback about how satiating the combination of starch and saturated fat is. That matches my experience on TCD. This could be due simply to the saturated fat and especially the stearic acid, but I’m starting to wonder if the starch has something to do with it.
But Also:
A friend sent me this:
I spoke with her later, she told me that she doesn’t typically consume flour but tried to stick to “protein and vegetables”. After reading my blog she got a bag of stearic acid, made the stearic acid butteroil (ghee), and made the frybread, as you can see from the thread. She said she can always eat. Always. But not the day she ate the frybread. She said she ate it in the morning and cruised right through til dinner without hunger. Even then she said she wasn’t really that hungry. “It was so weird”.
Oh, and she’s lost five pounds so far. So there’s that.
I totally think you should call it Stratocaster Ghee.
With a whammy bar?
Hello, bring on the whammy bar!
Whammy Bar™ – the chocolate treat that makes you feel fuller for longer!
Yes- when I ate croissants every morning in Paris I was not hungry for 6 hours plus. I have a question if you have time. I know in the reddit discussion you mentioned that you expect blood glucose to rise initially after the meal but then FBG should be lower over time. I am wondering if you can explain further especially for those transitioning from Keto or carnivore to the TCD that you would expect a high BG rise postprandially but a lower FBG. I understand this may be a transient thing as the body shifts but it can be alarming if your BG is generally low or stable.
In fact this was my experience- granted I got a cold, hadn’t been sleeping much so I noticed my FBG in the morning was a tad higher than usual and I ended up fasting all day so had one meal in the evening with heavy ghee and butter added ( I’ve been eating low fat per P:E but about 20-40 net carbs from rice or wheat and carrots)- I had 96g of protein comprised of shrimp, eggs and yogurt and a tiny bit of cheese in my meal. My carb wasn’t actually that high- maybe 15 net carbs at most? However I know typically if I go over 50 g of animal based protein in a meal I tend to have a rise in BG to 95-108- anyhow 1 hour post I didn’t have much rise probably 85-90 but 2 hours post it rose the highest it has ever gone to 142… I generally have really good BG control- usually its 78-82 sometimes as low as 74 when I wake up. Perhaps I ate too much protein in one meal? Or it’s working?
There are a lot of confounders here but trying to tease this out.
If you have a moment to explain what you think folks might experience from the transition from a Keto or LC diet to the TCG in terms of BG that would be great! I think folks are worried that the BG rise is going to persist etc. I also know that when you have eaten a Keto based diet for a long time you become physiologically insulin resistant in a way as well. Your thoughts?
Hey Emily!
The reason I think blood sugar will rise post-prandially is that fat cells will refuse to up their intake of blood glucose in response to insulin. So a blood sugar spike might mean that it’s working as intended. The reason I think fasting bloos sugar will drop is that it seems like saturated fat increases basal, non-insulin dependent glucose uptake by increasing a glucose transporter called GLUT1. Mind you, I’ve never tested any of this, I’m speculating and extrapolating from what happens in mice,
And yes, if you’ve been doing carnivore/keto etc, you might a higher spike to begin with.
If you somehow manage to sell food grade stearic acid and send international that would be awsome.
In EU, companies that have food grade don’t sell to individuals :/.
The only universally available stuff is pure(which is quite counterintuitive because it means you can only use it for teaching chemistry;) )or analitical grade :/
I have access to triple pressed stearic acid but it’s made of palmitic acid I believe.
Can I combine stearic acid palm derived with coconut oil? I live in a tropical country, butter is very expensive.
How do I do it?
Oh also what’s the reddit link where these people are reporting?
Thanks
http://www.reddit.com/r/SaturatedFat
I think stearic and palmitic acid with coconut oil would work.
Just wanted to let you know that The Croissant Diet is getting some interest over at the Ray Peat Forum as well. User “Haidut” has also posted some interesting studies using Stearic Acid and Stearyl Alcohol there as well.
What if this is the diet that brings Peat fans and Keto dieters together? That’d be weird, huh?
Haha! Yes, well, by suggesting Cocoa butter, I’ve extended a bridge to vegans as well!
Three days in: I can see that this will be a good method of normalizing eating for a lot of people, and for that reason alone, this is a great idea to have out there.
I have tested 2ce as pre-diabetic HbA1c range, but last time not, had been eating nearly zero carb for some weeks. However, I have chronic pain and carnivore/zc always makes that worse. Beyond that, shared the experience that so much meat was making me feel generally ill and, well, sad. So this suggestion fell on very ripe soil, and I can say that pain improved from Day 1, and that’s huge for me.
Each day, though, I’ve found that within 40 minutes, my blood sugar seems to plummet (I don’t use a glocometer), and I have gotten shaky and very hungry in a way I haven’t in months. I do think IF is a key piece for this, along w/zero PUFA, and I personally do better with earlier eating times, discovered that sort of by accident on zc.
And this morning gained a pound but more important an inch on my waist. So, not encouraging so far. For me, I don’t think going over 60-75 g carb/day is going to be tenable. Will see. If I continue to gain weight, all bets are off! 😀
Again, I am in my early 60s, sedentary (disabled), and this may simply be too much food but the hunger after eating is a real problem.
On the whole, it’s a good thing to have out there. The sense I’m getting this early on is that starch is not the devil, but maybe not a free ride on it, either, and some of us will have to limit.
Good luck to everyone and it will be fascinating to see how this all shakes out! Thanks, Brad!
Something to keep in mind if you are coming from a low or no carb diet is that introducing carbs back will likely induce some water weight gain. Some is transient, and some will be from increased glycogen. Basically, you are reversing the water weight loss that LC initially caused. Also, if you’ve been Low Carb for a long period of time, your body might have downregulated enzymes like amylase (which helps digest starch), so there might be a bit of an adaption period as well. But any dietary change can have this effect. Same thing happens to people who go Low Carb and get “The Low Carb Flu.”
Thanks very much, good reminder. That amylase down-regulation could certainly account for the extra inch around my waist today. Will report back how it goes. Thanks again!
I read about the diet just as I visited the Alps, and a week later, after butter croissants, raclette burger, quattro formaggi pizza, rice with omelette and gratin cheese, carbonara without bacon on rice noodles, sugar galette waffles, croissant-dough cheese sticks, and keto shake powder for nutrition, I lost 2kg without hunger. Nice 🙂
Early days of course but the satiation is real.
Excellent! Thanks for the feedback!
I do a lot of international travel and I hate airline food – about a year ago I stumbled on what has become my go-to pre flight meal; 3 rice cakes (I avoid wheat) slathered with butter, generously layered with cheese and deli meat. With that I’m good for 14+ hours until I get where I’m going and can have a proper meal. It works.
It’s one mechanism in a very complex system and for me, to feel my best, the next meal needs to be a big salad with plenty of green, red and yellow.
Is there a particular ratio of stearic acid to ghee when mixing to get in the concentration you want to have?
If you go above 25% stearic acid it will turn to wax in your mouth, which IMO is undesirable both for taste and digestibility.
Fascinating ideas here, thanks for sharing.
With your newly acquired 92% stearic acid powder, are you still going with these ratios:
80 parts Ghee : 20 parts Stearic acid : 10 parts MCT oil???
Yes. And the pasture butteroil I sourced is excellent. The new butteroil product came out VERY nice 🙂
I’ve tested eating raw cocoa butter and a combination of butter/cocoa butter/shea butter (will have to get some ghee), and have to say it’s shocking the amount of decrease in hunger I’ve experienced. And I’ve been low carb/keto since 1/1/14 and have already lost 50-60 pounds plus gained muscle mass. I’ve never experienced as great a decrease in hunger on my current diet (mainly meat) as I have by adding higher stearic acid to my diet.
You’re causing me to rethink things. I always complained about the kids eating buttered pasta. Yet we get them fried chicken fingers. Which is better? Before, I thought the chicken, due to higher protein. Maybe it’s the pasta with butter? (Too bad they can’t cook some protein like chicken or beef to add to the pasta with butter.)
We always complained about rice and bread. But maybe rice and bread are OK, if they also have a ton of butter and maybe stearic acid?
I might even have to try some rice/wheat bread + high fat. I might have to get a continuous glucose monitor to see what happens.
What about protein, meat especially? We have high protein diets (50% or more with some weight lifting) that is supposed to be highly satiating and have a thermic effect also causing fat burning.
SUre, some people have luck with high protein. I don’t much enjoy lean protein myself.
This is so interesting. I’ve been mostly paleo (my definition” high fat, low carb, lots of greens, some IF) for about 6 years and lost nearly 40lbs during the first year and kept it off for 3. In the past 1.5 years I’ve really fallen off the diet, had a couple injuries, and have put back on about 10 lbs. There was lots of cheating in there (grains and sugar that I don’t normally eat), little exercise, and probably too much wine and bourbon, but not really any actual bread or pasta.
In Dec we went to France for about 7 days. I decided to say “screw-it, since I’ve been so bad at my diet I’m going to eat bread and then I can ‘clean up my act’ when I get back.”
Any boy did I eat bread. And butter. So much delicious French butter. I’m not normally a breakfast eater, but every morning I’d have half a baguette slathered in butter and Breton cream in my coffee. And maybe a pain a chocolate, if the kids were having one. I mean, I was on vacation, right?
I didn’t normally feel the need to eat lunch even though were were walking our butts off — like 5-6mi/day — but if I did, it was often some pate with bread and butter. Dinner was often steak-frites and salad. Oh, and cheese. I normally eat generous portions of cheese. But in France I really ate a LOT of cheese. And yeah, I may have a chocolate mousse or two.
Anyway, I got home and was really worried about the damage the scale would show. Instead, I LOST 5.5lbs. I didn’t believe it. I wish I had thought to use the tape measure for verification.
It gets weirder. In the two weeks leading up to Christmas, I continued to eat like crap and not exercise much. But my “crap” didn’t include the bread. The cheats (not sure if we can call such a large part of my diet during these weeks a cheat) were sugar, and processed, oil-rich foods like potato chips and store-bought christmas cookies, and trashy holiday “chocolate” candy. And beer; I rarely drink beer. I probably ate less butter because I was consuming all the oils. And I didn’t eat bread because bread is “bad” and I was already being so bad (plus the bread in the US either sucks so badly or is ridiculously expensive compared to France – 0.90 Euro for a fresh baguette). Jan 1, I stepped on the scale, and … I gained 8lbs! WTF?
Nine days into the New Year I’m back on low carb and totally off alcohol. I’m back down 5lbs and feel pretty good, so I’m going to stick to it. But, if I plateau this time, Croissant Diet (with home baked starches) here I come!
This is the classic, “I went to France and cheated on my diet but to my amazement I lost weight” story.
Haha! I’ve heard it from so many at this point. Your consumption of chips upon returning to American and rapid weight gain following PUFA consumption is a very interesting twist, though!