recently while swimming underwater i noticed i gas sooner than normal. no chest pain. no limb weakness. just this feeling of oxygen starvation which is normal when you swim a long distance underwater but it was happening sooner than what i was expecting. i was concerned but it didn’t click at the time.
then a few days ago i saw a drop of my blood on a light color tile floor here at home and the color of the blood struck me as being off. the red wasn’t as saturated as i expected it to be. i started thinking about it and remembered that i was once Iron Deficient way back about 20 years ago and my doctor said the reason was because i had switched out Meat for Dairy in my diet …
Now not only Iron deficiency matches these symptoms but my actual diet for the past couple months since moving to Florida has been basically the same as what it was back when i was iron deficient the last time … i knew better, but it simply wasn’t something i was worried about - i was much more concerned with building muscle and losing fat so i focused on low calorie protein, namely whey protein, and completely stopped eating meat because it was too much hassle to cook.
it’s almost like there is a reason why whey protein bottles say “do not use for weight loss” on them … even though of course what else would you use it for ? the whole point of protein powder is to remove excess calories from a whole food protein so you can LOSE WEIGHT.
but it gets worse … much worse … when i started using Google AI to troubleshoot my diet i realized that not only have i completely eliminated the single most fundamental source of iron in my diet ( Red Meat ) but i have also done everything else humanly possible to block the absorption of what little iron was left in the remaining diet.
according to AI the best form of Iron is Heme Iron which is found in Red Meat and Liver. this form pretty much absorbs no matter what but i haven’t had it in half a year.
when it comes to Non-Heme iron ( like in vegetables ) it is much trickier to absorb and is easily blocked by things like:
1 - Dairy: surprise surprise - almost my entire diet is dairy - i drink milk, half and half, eat cheese, consume milk protein ( premier whey ) and milk protein cookies ( quest ). over half of my calories come from this.
2- Coffee: surprise surprise - i drink coffee all day - and in fact i mix my coffee with my milk and have it with my milk protein cookie !
3 - You need Vitamin C to absorb non-heme Iron: surprise surprise ! Vitamin C is precisely something i have NOT been consuming the past couple months even though i knew i had to but i simply didn’t.
If my goal was to create an iron deficiency i scarcely could have done a better job than what i have actually ended up doing !
the moral of the story is as follows:
1 - don’t stray from ancestral diets and real foods and don’t allow your diet to become skewed in any one direction too much. you may feel clever eating quest protein cookies because they are so quick and easy and delicious and go with coffee so well and have decent amount of protein and fiber and the calories aren’t too bad … IT DOESN’T MATTER. this isn’t real food. just because you can’t think of how it’s going to fuck you over at the moment doesn’t mean that it won’t.
in other words IIFYM ( If It Fits Your Macros ) is bullshit. why is it that only Macros matter ? MICRO nutrients ( like iron ) matter too. yes most bodybuilders who do IIFYM also take vitamins but in doing so they’re just proving that IIFYM is retarded because it has to be supplemented with multivitamins.
and Carnivores are worse because they are anti-supplement because they don’t want to admit that their diet is deficient ( in Vitamin C ). at least IIFYM folks know their diet is deficient and take supplements.
2 - do regular bloodwork. you are probably not a genius like me and can’t self diagnose like i did, but no worries - a blood test would instantly catch that iron deficiency.
3 - there are certain synergies in ancestral diets. for example you need Vitamin C to absorb iron from plant foods but you don’t need it to absorb iron from meat … “luckily” plant foods contain Vitamin C ( meat does not ) … so if you eat real food everything works out magically without you needing to think about it. it’s almost like it works because our biology evolved around it, duh ! on other hand once you begin to fuck with it by using things like Quest protein cookies everything falls apart and you fucking die.
in other words there are limits to our knowledge and processing power. the smarter you try to get about your diet ultimately the more hidden nutritional landmines you’re going to hit. much safer to stick to ancestral diets - there are synergies in them that you may not be aware of.