What do you think of "Peating" do you think it largely lines up/conflicts with Ayurveda. I'm NUL btw we're mutuals on Twitter, I've found the advice of Ray Peat/the associated community very useful.
Hey! so I was a quasi-Peater for a while—I never actually read Peat, but I read Brad Marshall, Exfatloss, etc. and did an ultra low polyunsaturated fat diet for a while. The low-PUFA itself was fantastic—I stopped having “IBS” and lost weight effortlessly. Eating a lot of red meat and dairyfat wasn’t and caused some problems I had to clean up later. (I didn’t really understand that heaviness has consequences other than weight gain, and maintenance doesn’t necessarily mean you’re digesting food well.)
Eating the Twitter peater diet—beef, cold dairy, orange juice, honey, salads covered in apple cider vinegar, etc—requires both (ridiculously) high digestive capacity and a high tolerance for acidic/heating foods. If Ayurveda is correct, these factors are unlikely to occur in the same person, so it seems like kind of a niche thing to me. (I don’t know if this diet is a strawman or what Peat actually recommends.)
I can confirm that sunburn immunity from avoiding PUFA completely or high omega-3/omega-6 ratio is real. I currently do not bother avoiding PUFA, as I now can digest it pretty well.
Thank you for sharing! It's crazy how much our society/culture is designed around doing the exact opposite of this.
I'm starting to get to the point where composition-of-food ruins my day less often and the experience/process of eating has a bigger impact, so these are good reminders.
i usually have a model of alt medicine that goes like
1. attaining sensory clarity is really good for you, then you can just listen and react
2. wisdom is really good for you; when somebody devotes their life to attaining wisdom, even if they do this in the context of a tradition i find suspect like woo medicine or sociology or venture capital or whatever, they will discover many universals
3. you can reach a state where you communicate with yourself using signals that were previously meaningless - i mean truly previously meaningless, not just ignored. this is basically good because it is a line of communication, but i think easy to universalize too much
4. i personally have a really hard time evaluating the quality of new age medicine providers because i am easily taken in by marketing
5. i basically predict that all alt medicine traditions are about equally good per number of hours people have put into developing it and number of hours your specific practitioner has put into developing their practice. i think probably different traditions are better for different "mysterious complex illnesses", but i could not begin to match them, and my grasp of complex illness archetypes of pretty weak
6. it is basically harmful to be hasty to look to ground out what physical process corresponds to eg flows of energy in one's body. however i have the impulse
so then this makes me think i would maybe like to see your doctor specifically but don't know how to use this post to step towards having the ability to find somebody who doesn't have a thousands of words testimonial
> how to use this post to step towards having the ability to find somebody who doesn't have a thousands of words testimonial
I have no idea either! When I look at websites (or podcast interviews, or whatever) I mostly look for people who seem like they've put a lot of thought into things, have a real world-model, are continuously taking and teaching classes, make everything feel custom and not generic. Unfortunately I probably miss all the people who are intuitively talented but not good writers or tech savvy.
I know people who find all of their practitioners through referrals/recommendations and this seems "nice if you can get it."
This is a good world model and I agree with most of it. I also think trying to map energetic to physical is usually a dead end.
***talking out my ass incoming, not medical advice, etc*** The best matches for Ayurveda specifically are metabolic issues with a mechanistic link to failures of digestion (even if they are not widely recognized as metabolic or digestive by Western med.) It can do lots of other things, but those are very squarely in its wheelhouse. I think of the prototypical ayurveda-candidate as someone with the "you're clearly very sick in some mysterious way" thing going on (hazy/fizzy energy, complexion and body smell are Wrong somehow, weird allergies or food intolerances or environmental sensitivities, trouble being fully asleep or fully alert, etc) and a lot of past cycles of problem->treatment->new iatrogenic issue->treatment to unwind.
maybe the thing I'm trying to point at here is that I think Jess's greatest strength is teasing out competing or conflicting processes that are going on at the same time, whereas most alternative medicine stuff I've seen is either "what if we hit this in one direction with the big apple cider vinegar hammer" or "what if we allow your nervous system to come to rest and heal itself" (great thing to have, but takes forever there's any kind of tangle/knot going on)
This is kind of like a "if a tree falls in the forest, did it make a sound" question. So I'm not sure, but I think it's the former. I vaguely remember having signals like this all along and blowing past them.
Did you have severe food intolerances? I have kinda similar chronic health issues though the vaccines were my initial trigger (not an anti vax statement, just a fact of my immune system) but I had a lot of the patterns before then, without realizing it.
Thinking about trying Ayurveda, I was hesitant in the past because I react terribly to many herbs and bitter foods that it would use for healing… but it sounds like it is still quite restrictive for you with foods? Do you still basically eat warm, cooked and bland and digestible to stay healthy…?
I have strong histamine intolerance and have to cook everything from scratch, I also don’t tolerate many fibers. My meal requirements are expensive and time consuming and limit my social life (I also strongly dislike my food after a couple years of a very dull diet). Having a resilient system that doesn’t require me to be 95% on a limited diet is a main goal
Yeah, I did. As for now, it's complicated--how restrictive fluctuates a lot day to day with symptoms, hunger, and activity level.
Bland--depends on what you mean but probably not? I use herbs and kitchen spices and the Maillard reaction like a normal person, and I'll be a bit more adventurous eating out. I do prefer simpler dishes with less ingredients, and I find contrasting ingredients noticeable and intuitively disgusting. I do eat raw fruits and vegetables sometimes unless I'm actively sick or running too cold.
I don't have many specific-food intolerances anymore; what remains of those are a handful of high-pitta foods I don't really care about (sesame oil, peanuts, clams.) I do have a very low tolerance for added sugar (like, a mango is fine, but manmade desserts are not), with unusual and painful symptoms. I am planning to do panchakarma (a more intensive treatment), see if that helps, and if not try other things outside ayurveda.
I've never had any issue with fiber or starch, so I can't comment on those. Since grains, beans, leafy greens, etc. have always been my safest and easiest-to-digest foods, it is sad to think you can't have them :(
the general thread of results among ayurveda-ers I know is "less restrictive diet overall, but with a few new restrictions/factors you weren't considering before and some changes to your palate/taste"
Oh wow the being able to tell how good impacts you resonates so much. I described it in almost the same words even!
Thanks for this, and nicely written
What do you think of "Peating" do you think it largely lines up/conflicts with Ayurveda. I'm NUL btw we're mutuals on Twitter, I've found the advice of Ray Peat/the associated community very useful.
Hey! so I was a quasi-Peater for a while—I never actually read Peat, but I read Brad Marshall, Exfatloss, etc. and did an ultra low polyunsaturated fat diet for a while. The low-PUFA itself was fantastic—I stopped having “IBS” and lost weight effortlessly. Eating a lot of red meat and dairyfat wasn’t and caused some problems I had to clean up later. (I didn’t really understand that heaviness has consequences other than weight gain, and maintenance doesn’t necessarily mean you’re digesting food well.)
Eating the Twitter peater diet—beef, cold dairy, orange juice, honey, salads covered in apple cider vinegar, etc—requires both (ridiculously) high digestive capacity and a high tolerance for acidic/heating foods. If Ayurveda is correct, these factors are unlikely to occur in the same person, so it seems like kind of a niche thing to me. (I don’t know if this diet is a strawman or what Peat actually recommends.)
I can confirm that sunburn immunity from avoiding PUFA completely or high omega-3/omega-6 ratio is real. I currently do not bother avoiding PUFA, as I now can digest it pretty well.
Thank you so much for posting this. I’m very interested in Ayurveda but I haven’t gotten it together to go as far into it as you have.
I did some minimal looking into it a while back, and posted these basic principles (compiled by the practitioner I worked with) plus a few observations of my own. Short post: https://lydialaurenson.substack.com/p/basic-principles-of-ayurveda
Thank you for sharing! It's crazy how much our society/culture is designed around doing the exact opposite of this.
I'm starting to get to the point where composition-of-food ruins my day less often and the experience/process of eating has a bigger impact, so these are good reminders.
i usually have a model of alt medicine that goes like
1. attaining sensory clarity is really good for you, then you can just listen and react
2. wisdom is really good for you; when somebody devotes their life to attaining wisdom, even if they do this in the context of a tradition i find suspect like woo medicine or sociology or venture capital or whatever, they will discover many universals
3. you can reach a state where you communicate with yourself using signals that were previously meaningless - i mean truly previously meaningless, not just ignored. this is basically good because it is a line of communication, but i think easy to universalize too much
4. i personally have a really hard time evaluating the quality of new age medicine providers because i am easily taken in by marketing
5. i basically predict that all alt medicine traditions are about equally good per number of hours people have put into developing it and number of hours your specific practitioner has put into developing their practice. i think probably different traditions are better for different "mysterious complex illnesses", but i could not begin to match them, and my grasp of complex illness archetypes of pretty weak
6. it is basically harmful to be hasty to look to ground out what physical process corresponds to eg flows of energy in one's body. however i have the impulse
so then this makes me think i would maybe like to see your doctor specifically but don't know how to use this post to step towards having the ability to find somebody who doesn't have a thousands of words testimonial
> how to use this post to step towards having the ability to find somebody who doesn't have a thousands of words testimonial
I have no idea either! When I look at websites (or podcast interviews, or whatever) I mostly look for people who seem like they've put a lot of thought into things, have a real world-model, are continuously taking and teaching classes, make everything feel custom and not generic. Unfortunately I probably miss all the people who are intuitively talented but not good writers or tech savvy.
I know people who find all of their practitioners through referrals/recommendations and this seems "nice if you can get it."
This is a good world model and I agree with most of it. I also think trying to map energetic to physical is usually a dead end.
***talking out my ass incoming, not medical advice, etc*** The best matches for Ayurveda specifically are metabolic issues with a mechanistic link to failures of digestion (even if they are not widely recognized as metabolic or digestive by Western med.) It can do lots of other things, but those are very squarely in its wheelhouse. I think of the prototypical ayurveda-candidate as someone with the "you're clearly very sick in some mysterious way" thing going on (hazy/fizzy energy, complexion and body smell are Wrong somehow, weird allergies or food intolerances or environmental sensitivities, trouble being fully asleep or fully alert, etc) and a lot of past cycles of problem->treatment->new iatrogenic issue->treatment to unwind.
maybe the thing I'm trying to point at here is that I think Jess's greatest strength is teasing out competing or conflicting processes that are going on at the same time, whereas most alternative medicine stuff I've seen is either "what if we hit this in one direction with the big apple cider vinegar hammer" or "what if we allow your nervous system to come to rest and heal itself" (great thing to have, but takes forever there's any kind of tangle/knot going on)
Great essay!
>When you’ve eaten just enough, you’ll feel a tiny burp-like release and your plate will start to look less vivid and enticing.
Do you think this is something that's already happening for everyone, or a kind of communication that only develops after one begins listening for it?
Thanks!
This is kind of like a "if a tree falls in the forest, did it make a sound" question. So I'm not sure, but I think it's the former. I vaguely remember having signals like this all along and blowing past them.
“I have digestive issues if I don’t eat lots of starchy carbohydrates”
Tries to eat salads every day, rekt bms. Eats pizza and bagels, Swiss clock.
Did you have severe food intolerances? I have kinda similar chronic health issues though the vaccines were my initial trigger (not an anti vax statement, just a fact of my immune system) but I had a lot of the patterns before then, without realizing it.
Thinking about trying Ayurveda, I was hesitant in the past because I react terribly to many herbs and bitter foods that it would use for healing… but it sounds like it is still quite restrictive for you with foods? Do you still basically eat warm, cooked and bland and digestible to stay healthy…?
I have strong histamine intolerance and have to cook everything from scratch, I also don’t tolerate many fibers. My meal requirements are expensive and time consuming and limit my social life (I also strongly dislike my food after a couple years of a very dull diet). Having a resilient system that doesn’t require me to be 95% on a limited diet is a main goal
Yeah, I did. As for now, it's complicated--how restrictive fluctuates a lot day to day with symptoms, hunger, and activity level.
Bland--depends on what you mean but probably not? I use herbs and kitchen spices and the Maillard reaction like a normal person, and I'll be a bit more adventurous eating out. I do prefer simpler dishes with less ingredients, and I find contrasting ingredients noticeable and intuitively disgusting. I do eat raw fruits and vegetables sometimes unless I'm actively sick or running too cold.
I don't have many specific-food intolerances anymore; what remains of those are a handful of high-pitta foods I don't really care about (sesame oil, peanuts, clams.) I do have a very low tolerance for added sugar (like, a mango is fine, but manmade desserts are not), with unusual and painful symptoms. I am planning to do panchakarma (a more intensive treatment), see if that helps, and if not try other things outside ayurveda.
I've never had any issue with fiber or starch, so I can't comment on those. Since grains, beans, leafy greens, etc. have always been my safest and easiest-to-digest foods, it is sad to think you can't have them :(
the general thread of results among ayurveda-ers I know is "less restrictive diet overall, but with a few new restrictions/factors you weren't considering before and some changes to your palate/taste"