Emmy reached out to me and thanked me for publishing The Croissant Diet. She said she had tried them all and that this was the first diet that allowed her to lose the weight. I asked if she cared to share her story and she obliged. She remained mostly carnivore during her weight loss but added cocoa butter and actual butter. This is her story, verbatim, as she emailed it to me.
March 2020 I read about the croissant diet. It intrigued me because it originated from a mouse study and the “inventor” of the diet sounded like an out of the box nerdy guy and I have a soft spot for that way of thinking.
My forte is not math and physics so I struggled to understand the minute mechanics of the diet but even I could grasp the saturated/unsaturated part of it. And the stearic acid part. It’s really not a complicated story if you look at the broad strokes: Eat mostly saturated fats that are high in stearic acid and avoid PUFA’S like the plague.
So I did. And I lost 7 kilo’s.
That may not sound like a great victory until you know that I’ve been trying to lose weight for the last 5 years without any result. I’ve never been really overweight in my life. I carried 5 kilo’s (10 pounds) too much on the legs, but that was it. Then came menopause. It hit me hard for some reason. Within two years I started to gain weight and suddenly a relatively healthy woman transformed into a (more or less skinny) fat person with huge metabolic problems, joint pain, skin issues and whatnot.Bummer.
I tried *everything*, even carnivore, but I kept on gaining. I was desperate to lose weight because I am convinced that the excess fat was fueling my auto immune issues. So I tried high protein low fat. High fat low protein. Low calorie. Ultra low calorie. And I gained weight. I gained weight on a 750 calorie diet for crying out loud!
So imagine my surprise when I tried yet again another approach, this croissant diet, and the scale began to move in the other direction.
In the beginning it was quite modest but there it was. I ate chicken breast with cocao butter and butter and I ate ground beef. More or less the same thing I’ve been doing all along except now I focused on saturated fats and I started to lose weight. Hallelujah!
After 3 months the weight loss accelerated from grams to kilo’s in a rapid pace. I weighed myself one day after two weeks and was convinced the scales were broken. Because after losing grams a week for 3 months, I suddenly lost 1,5 kilo. Stepped on the scale again and it really was 1,5 kilo! Next week another kilo.
Like all overweight women I had clothes in 3 dress sizes hoping to fit in one of them ever again at some point. Now almost all of them are too big. Even the clothes I bought at the beginning of this summer, 7 weeks ago!
I was getting convinced that losing weight was not for me because I have hypoglycemia and arthritis and physical activity is hard for me. In the last few years I lost a lot of muscle and everybody knows you need muscle to lose weight. And exercise. Which I can’t do because of the joint pain.
But despite of all that I now weigh less than when I was a teen-ager and I feel fantastic. And all that happened in 3,5 months. After 5 years of useless effort.
So I tried and errored on this diet but I finally settled on this: beef or some kind of other lean meat like chicken. As a side I have 80 grams of butter and 20/25 grams of cacao butter. I melt the cacao butter and whip it into the butter. It’s quite silky and very nice. Because of gut issues i eat a carnivore diet but if I didn’t, I would take the same fats and incorporate them into my veggies.
The stearic acid in The Croissant Diet is the missing link in the successful low carb approach to insulin. The fact that I started to lose crazy amounts of weight in the end I attribute to less and less PUFA in my fat reserves. Maybe.
The last thing I would like to mention is the wine. Don’t skip and don’t skimp. It’s a vital and pleasant component of The Croissant Diet.
Emmy
Thanks for sharing! Nice work.
What a great result! Thanks for sharing Emmy and Brad! I am just munching on some cocoa butter (I have some as buttons) and was just thinking I needed to explore whether or not it’s as good as stearic acid (which is still on it’s way). And I don’t want to add starch but am buoyed by your experience! I eat mostly carnivore (outside of coffee and herbal teas and I still have cream and butter and plain yoghurt but not cheese — and when I eat with friends or out or with family I eat keto). I will continue with the cocoa butter then as that’s much easier to get here (Australia).
That’s so heartening to hear Emmy as I am in a very similar place to you! I will actually give it a go now…i had been thinking about it but always felt that a man’s metabolism works differently to a menopausal woman and didn’t think it would be something that could work for me!
Are you still losing weight or have you plateaued?
This is exactly why I wrote this. I thought it rather funny that Brad lost what…. 4 lbs in a weekend? Boys will be boys I thought. But then I remembered an excellent talk by Michael Edes (https://youtu.be/pIRurLnQ8oo) who just like Brad mentioned Peter Hyperlipid and vegetable oils and I started to read up on insulin signalling and ROS. And when you read all of the fire in a bottle blog you cannot conclude other than it makes sense.
Scientifically sound ànd funny.what’s not to love…
I don’t weigh myself at the moment because we have a bit of a heatwave here and I can’t get my rings of my fingers. So that means I’m storing water.
Best of luck Traysi!
Just to be sure that I’m reading this right, she’s just eating the high stearic acid oil straight? No making baked goods with it?
I believe she is using a 50:50 blend of butter and cocoa butter as a condiment for lean meats.
I used 75:25 butter and cacao butter. I wisk it and use it as compound butter. But I’m going to try to up the cacao butter a bit, untill it gets waxy.
At 75:25 it’s nice and fluffy.
I eat only animal food at this time, so no baking.
The Croissant Diet brought me here. I’m on my way to testing it. I’m a 72 year old tennis player who has resolved his joint pain, but I’m almost 30 lbs heavier than I was 25 years ago, when I could still win tournament matches. I wish to lose enough weight in order to recover some of my movement ability.
I mentioned fixing my joint pain. My primary pain was in my shoulder. I altered my strokes to lessen pain but I couldn’t get away from it until I started supplementing with an enzyme called serrapeptase. It was discovered in silk worms. No silkworms die in the production of serrapeptase capsules.
Serrapeptase connects with and obeys the human immune system. In my case, it reduced and then eliminated joint pain, which I think was due to scar tissue build up from 50+ years of tennis and running. It is unlikely to help something like a bicep muscle tear.
I researched serrapeptase for weeks before trying it. I was lucky to get some pain relief in a month, with comprehensive relief in less than six months. I continue to take it.
I suggest anyone considering using it do their own research. There are many reports on the web.
Anyhow, I went to my grocery for ground wild boar, eggs, and English muffins which I will toast and saturate with butter. My coffee will have butter. I will make rich man’s brioche (baking croissants beyond me but will buy at store). I will drink some red wine. Going to buy ghee and forget about olive oil for the time being. Maybe save up for a monthly fire food shipment.
Awesome. Good luck! I’m glad you found relief from joint pain.
Brad
I would like to know, if I cann’t drink wine, will this diet work for me?
I think so! You may want something else to stave off hunger during the “fast” days, which could be something like a cream soup made without flour – broth, cream and onions or mushrooms. Or a cucumber salad made with sour cream.
Brad
So good to hear this story! I have been doing some version of this for months with a little success. I am currently doing the Feast Mimicking Diet (at the end of cycle 2 today) and loving it. Definitely getting weight loss & waist circumference results already. Question – how do we feel about using some form of electrolyte drink? I have been using the LMNT product – I feel so much better when using it – but don’t want to stunt my progress. I only had a bit on Day 1, but would love to add it in on Day 4. I know I would feel so much better :). Thoughts? It has NaCl, Citric acide, KCL, natural flavors & stevia leaf extract. Thanks!!
My only concern is that the sweet flavor from the stevia leaf sweetener would stimulate some insulin production, but prob not much. Have you tried the electrolyte drink? Is it working?
Hi, How much stearic acid do you recommend a day for a 200 pound man who ideally should be at 170 pounds. This is assuming I am following the right ratios.
This is a question I get a lot and I don’t like making specific recommendations. My feast meals contain perhaps 150g of fat, 2/3 of which is saturated and 25-30% of which is stearic acid.
Brad, Have you ever shipped your butter oil to Canada?
Thanks
FerrisWheel
Yes, all the time! Interestingly, Canada is the only country where shipments get lost. Australia, the UK, Mexico, Hong Kong are all fine. Canada has an 85% success rate of shipments arriving.
Hi Emmy, I’m so pleased that you’ve found something that works. Like you, I suspected diets only worked for the guys!
You look great in your pic, but we don’t have a ‘before’ pic, so I was wondering if you could confirm which areas you lost the weight from?
I’ve been adding cocoa butter to dripping (tallow) and have definitely lost visceral fat (my waist is smaller) but I haven’t lost anything from my lumpy thighs or the little belly-pouch that menopause was kind enough to gift me with.
I am slim with a healthy BMI, but I just have these areas of stubborn subcutaneous fat!
Hi ThighHi,
No before pictures I’m afraid for obvious reasons. I really didn’t like to be in a picture. The one above could be considered a before picture now because I lost 3 kilo’s since.
I lost weight everywhere. Waist, arms, everywhere. Even at those stubborn thighs and that was weight that wouldn’t budge no matter what. It is very visible in the mirror. Bought new pants in June and had to buy new ones again in August. The one in the picture needs a belt now to stay put.
Give it time, it took me a few months before the weight started to really drop off
I wish you the best of luck.
This is so interesting but I wonder why not use coconut oil and butter together.lean meats like chicken breast sauteed in butter and coconut oil with veggies sounds like a sure fire way to lower pufa content stored in body rather quickly.
You can. I’m still on the fence about coconut oil because the fat chain lengths are shorter and there may be some hormonal magic happening with 18 chain length fats specifically.
Thank you for this, Emmy! Would you mind giving a bit more detail on the prep of the butter/cacao butter mixture? How long does it have to set up? And is this the amount you’d eat at one meal? Thanks!
Hi Adrian
I measure about 25 grams (1oz?) of cacao butter. Put it in a small cup, put the cup in shallow hot water until it melts.
I cut 75 grams(3 oz?) of butter in little cubes and put it in a narrow, high bowl. Poor the cacao butter over the cubes, add some salt ( you can also add things like garlic, pepper, chives….) and mix it with a hand mixer just like you would do if you made whipped cream. You do need an electrical mixer for this whipped butter.
From start to finish it takes me between 5 and 8 minutes, the biggest part is waiting for the cacao butter to melt.
Approximately 3/4 I eat at lunch, the rest at dinner.
Hope this helps
Hi everybody,
Ok, I’m all in.
63 year old female.
I’m a power lifter, competitive stair climber, I’m already pretty fit for my age.
I had a DEXA scan last week.
I’m going to do TCD for 12 weeks, then do a follow up scan.
I’m hoping to lose these last stubborn 10 lbs without losing muscle mass.
The proof will be in the numbers.
I’ll post my before/after scans at the end of November.
Lori
Wow, excellent! Let us know!
This is so encouraging! I just purchased stearic acid wax from a soap dispensary and it looks like little flakes of snow, I hope this is the right stuff? Now do I just mix it in with butter? 😅
Yeah, there are a number of grades and quality of stearic acid out there. You SHOULD be OK? Just add it to the butter until it’s too waxy. Then add a little more butter until its good.