Level of fat in the diet

[alex3619]

Hi Calathea, I am not sure a simple table approach would be accurate. People vary too much. Usually you use tables to calculate lean weight though, based on total weight and skin fold tests. Even this is only approximate. There are machines similar to scales which many dieticians use that use electrical effects to measure lean weight - I do not recall their name just now.

Furthermore in us this relates to issues we may have with body fluid - either retention or loss.

I also don't think that getting too technical is worth it. The figures are only going to be approximate anyway. There are however published tables that tell you this kind of thing for what it is worth - I just don't really trust them. It needs to be measured not read off a table, and even then its approximate. So from my perspective I think that we should be sticking to general principles and not worrying about specific details.

Unless you are on a metabolically controlled diet (as I was once for a year) worrying about minute details is not worth the bother - rules of thumb are easier to live with.

The simplest way to think about lean weight is to think back to when you were fully grown but slim (which is not always the case but is for many people): what did you weigh? Unless something dramatic has happened (e.g. you became a body builder) this should approximate your lean weight if you subtract five to twelve percent: five is for very lean males, twelve percent is for more typical women if I recall correctly. In any case if you ask your medical practitioner they can give you an ideal target weight and to keep things simple you can calculate from ten percent below that as lean weight. That should be sufficiently accurate for most purposes.

Since some of us have lost a lot of muscle weight, it might be the case that if you are substantially underweight then your actual body weight might be a good approximation: it means you might eat a little more protein than you might otherwise need.

Bye, Alex

 

[heapsreal]

im happy just eating my meat, chicken, eggs and cheese, all good low carb food, very filling, yum yum yum.
With minimal exercise i have got my weight down from a whopping 135kg down to 115kg tough as nails, so 20 kilo in total with no exerciseas to help me.

cheers!!!

 

[Valentijn]

I currently think consumption of over 2g/kg is burning protein for fuel in all probability. This might be desirable for some, but its not to provide protein for repair and maintenance, and that includes building muscle.

We might be burning protein as fuel whether we're eating it or not. It would account for the muscle wasting that is experienced by some. Also, quite a few of us have lab results showing that the Krebs Cycle is functioning pretty poorly. Some recover somewhat at the stage where alpha-ketoglutaric acid is fed into the cycle, and some don't. But it is possible that all of us with that problem can benefit from higher protein consumption, if the main malfunction is where carbs and fats are fed into the Cycle.

I've been trying a high protein diet for a couple weeks, and my energy levels have gone up a bit - going up the stairs is definitely easier than it was. I've had to stop the diet temporarily because I've been using a chocolate protein powder (slow-release), and I think chocolate overload might be causing my current histamine symptoms and massive itching. But I have noticed substantial reduction in appetite ... mainly I no longer feel like I'm starving if it's been more than two hours since the last time I ate. I also lost a couple pounds, but that might be fluid fluctuations, etc.

 

[alex3619]

Hi Valentijn, I have no doubt we are losing protein in our tissues as its used for fuel, though I do not think this is a continuous or rapid process. An interesting point is the first place we lose protein from catabolic metabolism is in the gut wall - I do wonder if that is linked to our gut problems. In any case there is a limit to how much protein our bodies can use for repair in a given day - and I am fairly sure (but not certain) we would hit that limit under 2g/kg of protein.

The other problem is non-metabolic protein catabolism and protein folding. There is some evidence to suggest we destroy certain classes of proteins, including those that are targets of elastase. In addition we probably destroy certain types of RNA that lead to other proteins (due to RNase L activity). There may be other processes as well. In addition since we lack sufficient glutathione (typically speaking) we may have high levels of misfolded protein - and KDM has seen this in patients.The body then has to keep pumping out the same proteins to get enough to function. Worse, this will not show up on simple testing because the protein is present but in the wrong form to work, so it may not be detected as deficient with any standard testing.

What this means is we have a very high demand for protein before we even get to using it as fuel. Reliance on protein for energy puts its own demands on the body though, as does using fat for energy. Carbs are a simpler source of energy with fewer demands.

Eating more protein after a point will not increase repair and replacement of protein though, as I have said. I have not looked into the science behind this for some years, maybe someone else can comment on modern understanding of protein balance?

Bye, Alex