Episode 14 – (re)Engineering Our Thoughts About Cholesterol with Dave Feldman

Dave Feldman is a software engineer and entrepreneur who, like my previous guest Ivor Cummins, dove deep into the research of ketogenic diets after adhering to one led to massive improvements in his health. Like Ivor he began doing this full time as a result of seeing how important this knowledge is, and how much […]

The post Episode 14 – (re)Engineering Our Thoughts About Cholesterol with Dave Feldman appeared first on Deskbound.

Dave Feldman is a software engineer and entrepreneur who, like my previous guest Ivor Cummins, dove deep into the research of ketogenic diets after adhering to one led to massive improvements in his health. Like Ivor he began doing this full time as a result of seeing how important this knowledge is, and how much of an uphill battle we face.

Dave is what I can only describe as a bit of a cowboy on the frontier of ketogenic research, performing experiments on himself by massively restricting multiple aspects of his diet and lifestyle, changing minute things, tracking every single marker he can and drawing conclusions based upon it. This includes actively making changes that he KNOWS are bad for him, as he described in that segment at the beginning here.

Dave writes about the results of his experiments and other data at cholesterolcode.com, where you will see that he’s not some health and wellness guru trying to sell you the products that just so happen to align with his findings. He’s funded entirely by donations through Patreon, and has a rule that he will only accept donations from individuals, refusing to accept any from corporations to avoid any potential “quid-pro-quo” effect on his research.

In this interview we discuss the results of his weight gain experiment and upcoming resistance training experiment, the impact of exercise on LDL cholesterol, the underlying influences that affect dietary choices, and much more.

So enjoy this interview with the cowboy of keto research, Dave Feldman.

Notes and resources:

Dave’s website: http://cholesterolcode.com/

Dave on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveKeto

Weight Gain Experiment:

Part 1: http://cholesterolcode.com/gaining-weight-for-science/

Part 2: http://cholesterolcode.com/weight-gain-experiment-progress-update/

Part 3: http://cholesterolcode.com/carotid-artery-update-sad-diet-edition/

The Skittles Experiment: 

Part 1: http://cholesterolcode.com/sugar-and-cholesterol-experiment-part-i/

Part 2: http://cholesterolcode.com/sugar-and-cholesterol-experiment-midmortum/

Part 3: http://cholesterolcode.com/sugar-and-cholesterol-experiment-findings/

Outline:

03:10 – The importance of changing your expectation of the things you consume away from being a source of enjoyment (and disappointment)

08:55 – How the habit of consuming certain things, or the mechanical action that precede consuming them can trigger a feeling of joy outside of the pleasure of consuming the thing itself

13:00 – The gap we have between objectively knowing what’s best for us and what we need to do, versus what we understand at it’s core well enough to make the changes

15:05 – Finding the underlying influences that affect your decision making around healthy (and unhealthy) eating

18:05 – Finding success in cold turkey changes, shifting your mindset around food from one of pleasure to one of sustenance for your body

19:15 – How the brain works through comparison, comparing your healthy food choices to the tastier unhealthy ones, and how longer stints of healthy eating make it easier to maintain that habit

23:25 – Dave’s water only experiment(still eating a normal diet, but drinking nothing but plain water), and his reasons for doing it

28:00 – How artificial sweeteners affect the gut microbiome, Dave’s opinion of the importance of the microbiome in overall health, and the personal experiences of his friends and family members who’ve improved that area of their health

34:45 – The importance of viewing your health from a broad environmental perspective, instead of looking at specific issues in a vacuum

36:15 – How many health benefits that come from diets are more about removing unhealthy foods than adding healthy foods

38:10 – How Dave’s weight gain experiment affected his gut microbiome and overall behavior

42:00 – Dave’s problems with sleep, and how that affects his experiments

51:55 – Dave’s weight gain experiment: what he did before, during, and after, and what happened as a result

55:40 – The impact of exercise on LDL cholesterol (in Dave’s personal experience)

59:30 – Dave’s current baseline ketogenic diet for research

1:05:30 – The correlation between the rate at which visceral fat is both accrued and expended

1:09:55 – Personal fat threshold explained, and how people can be in very poor health from diet without being overweight

1:14:25 – How Dave’s weight gain experiment affected his major biomarkers for health and longevity

1:21:45 – How the experiment affected Dave’s CIMT (carotid intima media thickness), a major indicator of cardiovascular disease risk, which moved him from the 20th percentile of lowest risk to the 80th percentile of highest risk

1:32:15 – Dave’s next experiment around resistance training

1:38:15 – How Dave’s controlling as many variables as possible to isolate the effects of resistance training of the same intensity for his new experiment

1:40:45 – Dave’s skittles experiment, and how the order in which you eat your macronutrients for the identical meal can impact your major health biomarkers

1:44:10 – Where to keep up with Dave’s work moving forward

The post Episode 14 – (re)Engineering Our Thoughts About Cholesterol with Dave Feldman appeared first on Deskbound.