The Croissant Diet Experience with a CGM - Sept 2020

I've been on the bandwagon of The Croissant Diet (TCD) for a little while.  Maybe 6 weeks or so.  And I thought I should document things a bit.

There was a great summary by Brad Marshall on Twitter on what The Croissant Diet actually is:

Eat LOTS of long chain Saturated Fat and avoid PUFA like the plague. Also avoid MUFA. If you want to eat some starch, go for it! But smother them in SatFat. That’s the whole thing, really.

— FireInABottle (@fire_bottle) September 21, 2020

What I'm eating:

Meat - beef or lamb mostly as this is low in PUFAs and high in stearic acid.

Fats for cooking - tallow or butter.  Enhanced with stearic acid.  

Eggs - cos they are a great whole food.  Usually cooked in tallow or butter (enhanced with stearic acid if I remember).

Butter

Cream for tea

Coffee - usually black

Low carb "carbs" -- Atkins crispbread and Woolworths Macro bread. These have vegetable oils so not great but I try and overwhelm it with lots of butter.  But generally not something I have a great amount but just eating butter is just not very satiating.  

Berries - mulberries (home grown!), strawberries and blueberries.

Treats - Avalanche Hot Drinks.  Keto ice cream.  Chocolate (dark or Lindt Lindor White).

I currently have a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) which means I'm experimenting with starches - the theory behind the Croissant Diet seems to indicate that starches are great as a delivery mechanism of the saturated fat but also provides satiety and also the glucose created from the ingestion of carbs doesn't actually end up in fat IF you have enough saturated fat.

So since I have had my CGM I have had:

Croissant and even Ice Cream!! (Also walked 40,000 steps that day!)

Home made "croissants" with added stearic acid

A friend heard I was on TCD and got an apple galette and chocolate croissant as well as something else (I didn't have any of the something else as I thought I'd overload on treats/carbs!) - it was delish though!

Sourdough fruit bread!  I think like a lot of fermented foods it seems to give me a reaction - I think in the form of itchy skin.  But this could be starches or just gluten.  I'm still experimenting to work this one out.

Pho (rice noodle soup) - normally I'd choose this as a keto meal and just ask for them to not add the noodles.  But I thought I could indulge as the beef and tendons would surely help offset the carbs (yes I know it doesn't work that way but I was feeling confident as my blood glucose hadn't been going up too much even with the croissants and sourdough fruit bread).  But alas my blood sugar spiked up!  You can see it on the Tuesday 15th around 1pm.

The other significant bump/hill/mountain/spike is from an excess consumption of carbs in the form of two pieces of sourdough toast!  Weirdly it spikes around 3 hours after eating :(  (I still have no idea how bad that is!)

I've also been trying to have some Cruskits - Rye Cruskits which are low carb (but not quite keto!) with lots of butter.  Not sure this works as well as bread as with bread I can fry it in tallow or stearic acid enhanced butter... 

Result so far - I feel like I'm losing fat... as in things seem less flabby. But the scale has gone up... and come down... and is all over the place.  But I've always been a difficult loser.  And although I lose fat (seemingly!) I don't seem to lose weight.  I'm hoping stearic acid and no PUFAs is the answer.  Time will tell.