Alistair's blog

Hi all – this will be a quick post that I wanted to send before my more formal pieces. I thought I should pass on some of the things and skills in life that I’ve learnt and explored that will help you guys too. Nutrition is a cornerstone to not only our health, but our culture too. Below is a quick summary and guide to improve your food choices. I hope you guys will make changes as I don’t want any of my friends to die early.

For those who know me, I have explored nutrition and food choices for a while now. And once you get into it, you start to realize how the food industry has been poisoning its citizens for a while – so I wanted to write down a few principles and ideas that I have discovered and tested so that all of you can find your own optimal diet.

These principles are geared towards optimal health, rather than niche ideas like weight loss or FAD diets. The important thing is to test and see what’s best for you. Be smart and lucid. Don’t just passively accept things thrown at you.

We’re going to start with Ray Peat who has gained popularity among X spaces. Dr. Peat has an incredibly story. His main thesis is that we should maximize energy production and our daily metabolism level, as doing so would reduce our stress levels. He argued that energy and structure are interdependent at every level. And that a high flow of energy not only made us feel physically great, but spiritually would also help us expand our consciousness and heal from stressors.

From a biological POV, we would want to have optimal carbohydrate production, producing ATP (= higher metabolism) rather than fat, which burns lactate (lowering metabolism). And the worst fat of all is polyunsaturated fat, like seed oils, which impairs metabolism and causes many degenerative diseases. Seed oils is the norm these days! In Ray’s own words, again, the main thesis is “keeping the metabolic rate up is the main thing, and there are lots of ways to do it.”

Ray believed carbs are essential – and you should prefer sugar over starches, as starches can impair digestion and energy flow. You also want enough protein in your detail (the cliché 1lb per bodyweight is a good benchmark) but you want to balance between muscle meats and gelatinous cuts, as muscle meat can be inflammatory. The cornerstone of the diet should be fruits, cheese, dairy, red meat, occasional shellfish, and eggs. Carb intake should be between 200-500g. The biggest controversial take that most people misunderstand is that sugar can be good for you as it raises metabolism. For Asians, you can also have white rice and well-cooked potatoes – but that comes down to personal preference. Some people can’t digest starches or potatoes as well as others. In terms of fat, you want to stick with saturated fats such as butter or coconut oil.

Avoid chicken, pork, and salmon as they are high in PUFA. You would also want to balance the calcium:phosphate ratio to around 2:1 (also a good ratio for carbs:protein) and you can do so by consuming dairy products. Coffee is good, and you want adequate salt intake in your diet. Well-made ice cream is a health food! But eating too much will make you fat. I don’t want to go into too much detail. But in the end, you want to raise metabolism and avoid PUFAs which are very common. Some people end up eating 4000/5000 calories after peating without gaining weight. If you do want to start experimenting, I recommend keeping fat intake below 10% of your diet and consume mostly sugar for your carb intake so you don’t gain weight too fast.

The way I like to think about “Peating” is that you’re almost trying to be a happy kid or dog – you’re full of energy and full of life, which leads to health in many other dimensions. For example, kindness comes from excess energy, as you need additional energy to put effort into someone else’s well-being. A person who is tired and worn out is less likely to be kind.

I urge you to read some of his articles at raypeat.com. You will discover many insights.

There are many other perspectives out there, including the recently popular animal-based diet. The animal-based diet has many Peat principles, and the main advocates transitioned from a carnivore based and added fruits to their diet. You need cards in your diet! Carb is fuel.

There are also vegan and vegetarian perspectives out there who stick with very low fat. In fact, in the extreme cases they stick to less than 10g a day. I’ve experimented with these approaches, and although they have their positives (like fat loss), I think they undereat protein. In terms of macro ratio, I do think a low fat and moderate protein diet makes sense.

As a general and easy to follow principle, I would use the following list of foods to build the base of your diet. Try and stick with this list the next time you’re at a supermarket and build around it. Different people react differently to different foods, but this is a good list to start with.

• Ripped fruits
• Any dairy products (skim milk, full fat milk, cheese etc)
• Butter (look at the ingredients for some of the spreadable butters, they add seed oils to make it softer. Get pure butter)
• Coconut Oil
• Ghee
• Tallow
• Most vegetables that you enjoy (spend more time and cook them thoroughly! Carrots are one of the few exceptions that you can eat raw)
• Beef (grass fed is ideal)
• White rice
• Potatoes (cook them well! Pay attention to how well you digest potatoes)
• Kefir, Yogurt  
• Coffee
• Sugar, honey, maple syrup
• Salt
• Orange Juice!
• Cream
• Garnishes (garlic, rosemary etc)
• Gelatin
• Cream
• Oysters
• Cocoa
• Eggs (don’t go crazy with eggs, occasional one or two will do)
• Sourdough bread (again, pay attention to how you react)
• Ice Cream (make sure they have clean ingredients; Haagen-Dazs is a safe choice)
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil (make sure it’s a quality one, smell it. Only use it if you crave it)

Some people may find all this excessive. To be honest with you, I don’t enjoy doing it too much either. I wish I could just eat whatever is out there without restrictions. But I do it because it’s more of a principle I want to follow – if big corps and other people in power are trying to push poison down me, I must resist and regain agency. I don’t want to be a lab mouse.

In the end, if there is something you can do to avoid cancer or other diseases, I think you all should do it. Lmk if you have any questions.