A while ago, I found that exercise was no longer a sufficient way to control my depression. It sort of worked, in that I would have the desire to get up and do /something/, but I found that it began to give me a kind of mania. I would stay up into odd hours of the night, riding around town on my bicycle, listening to stressful electronica. With daddy's money, this was something that I could do for a while without other people pointing the insanity.
Anyway, since exercise was starting to make me weirdly unstable, I explored other approaches for why I was sick in the head. I ate Keto. I ate Carnivore. (Kind of cringing to think about it now... although it did sort of work, and I still maintain that it can be helpful). I made a thread about it here. The most important shift, I think, was realizing that reality does have a palpable effect on consciousness, as silly as it might sound to put forth. If the ingestion of a "drug"-like substance can have an effect on consciousness, it stands to reason that the lesser, "food"-like substances would also have similar effects in lesser measure.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I have found protracted relief, and a surplus in creative impulse, when shifting my "keto" style over to a "Peaty" one. While "keto" provides consistent, frantic energy, something more "Peaty", shifting the metabolism over to oxidative respiration versus cortisol-driven fermentation, provides a more "baseline" energy, something that allows one to extract the juices of life.
While not evolutionarily consistent in the same way that consumption of raw meat matches that of our primitives, that is not the goal-of-goals. If we believe that we can make machines, technologies, that surpass some aspects of humanity (indeed, it was the development of hunting weapons that enabled Homo Sapiens to develop its brain), it stands to reason that we can /continue/ to develop. To this end, substances that increase cellular stability and energy should be consumed. Coffee is good for you -- so long as taken with sufficient nutrition on the side.
(Read all articles)
https://raypeat.com/
(Tiktok-esque short video introduction, very useful propaganda)
https://wiki.chadnet.org/files/introduction-to-ray-peat.mp4
(Transcriptions of radio/podcast interviews)
https://bioenergetic.life/
There is a devoted Peat Twitter which is actually pretty great. Other internet materials are readily retrievable on any platform, like youtube.
tldr: sugar is maligned, in a way not unlike the saturated fats that I idolized before (and should still be present in the diet). If there is a True Enemy inside the modern diet, it is seed oil, and in our times, the PUFA-laden chicken, salmon, etc. Beans, grains, nuts, seeds, should be avoided. Simple sugars are more digestible than complex ones, generally. But if complex carbohydrates are necessary, then potatoes are superior to grains. Take care to use "traditional" preparation methods for potatoes, and so on, which tend to eliminate plant toxins. Nixtamalized corn is also alright.
For the past few months, for instance, I've mostly been subsisting on something sugary and caffeinated in the morning (yerba mate, coffee with milk and sugar), milk and orange juice throughout the day, solutions of gelatin at night, and beef as desired (which turns about to be maybe once every three days). Cheese sometimes. Ice cream. No bread, ever.
But, really, the key thing is lowering PUFA, I think. That and replacing starch for sugar (which, contrary to expectation, is less glycemic), and prioritizing nutritive sources of sugar (i.e., orange juice) over mere sucrose, should yield great improvements to cellular energy, as quantifiable in terms of average waking body temperature.
Depression, ADHD, some forms of dementia, are diseases of low brain energy. In high school biology, we learned that glucose is the most ATP-favorable cellular fuel. Therefore, a tolerable source of glucose is critical to have (energy). To coordinate the resultant energies, structural products (good-quality proteins, like red meat, especially gelatinous red meat, cheese, milk) should be consumed as well. And that's all there is to life, really. Coordinated action. If you find that what you consume leads to greater intentionality and direction, and you find that you need less "discipline" to do the things you want to do, you're doing it right.
I will not be taking questions. Use your adult judgement before you ruin your life by over-applying something that I say here.