The RCP protocol/Ray Peat diet was HORRIBLE for me.
“to be honest, I felt like I was gonna drop dead if I didn’t get OFF this diet. I followed the diet to the letter too, I did ALL the starts/stops etc… so no one can question me on that.”
So, as young menstruating woman I’ve always struggled with iron levels. When I was around 16 my ferritin levels dropped to 3. Yes, 3. The doctor was pushing me to go to hospital for a blood transfusion BUT I felt I could get my levels up with supplements and thankfully, I did. Since then I’ve always had levels around the 20 mark, and felt good (some people feel terrible with ferritin around 20 but my mum, nana, aunts and myself have all hovered around that mark and we feel pretty great so idk).
Then I fell into a black hole on instagram/youtube and facebook of info about Ray Peat and Morley Robbin’s Root Cause Protocol, these “diets” are based around balancing your mineral levels, focusing on magnesium therapy AND stopping ALL iron intake and replacing it with copper foods which are meant to up-regulate the iron already in your system…. so essentially the copper is meant to open up the pathways for your iron to work at a healthy level… It’s a little more complicated than that but that’s the VERY, insanely short version; you can google it for the big version…. anyway….
I thought, yeah, I’ll try this!
I was sick of paying for iron supps, my already pretty awesome (if I do say so myself) diet was tweaked with some Ray Peat/RCP approved foods like orange juice, butter, bee pollen, extra carbs & seafood…. I was feeling good for the first, hmm, maybe 4 weeks… and then, things went downhill fast. I was running and feeling like DEATH, dizzy & my heart would beat through my chest like an ape was beating it… I was tired ALL the time, BONE tired, I’d gained 2kgs AND my very thick hair basically stopped growing (thank god it didn’t fall out). Anxiety started to come back 10 fold even though I was drinking the “adrenal cocktail”… it wasn’t great…
So I was going to give myself 3 months before testing my bloods (iron levels) but at around 2.5 months I dragged my tired ass to the blood collection centre and waited 2 days to find out my ferratin dropped from 25 to 9. NINE. Also my overall blood stores had dropped to anemia levels… Explains why I was puffed out walking through the supermarket and needed a lie down…
SO, the verdict is; this diet is NOT for everyone. No diet is. But there are so many hardcore RCP/Ray Peat followers who just think EVERYONE has to follow their rules or you’ll drop dead of 2million different kinds of diseases… to be honest, I felt like I was gonna drop dead if I didn’t get OFF this diet. I followed the diet to the letter too, I did ALL the starts/stops etc… so no one can question me on that.
Having said all of that, there are some parts of the diet I’ll be keeping around, the late night pre bed snack is a great one, as well as copper foods and magnesium. It’s 100% not all bad & it’s worth trying… everything is worth trying but please for the love of god keep a watch on your iron levels & your bloods in general.
Ya girl feels like she’s back on the right path now, no one could steal these iron pills from my (freezing) cold hands now…. all you RCP/Ray Peat-ers can judge me on that if you wanna, but my dad is 73 years old and taken iron his whole life and he looks 10x fitter & younger than Morley Robbins so I’m taking that as my sign that I’m gonna be ok.
#raypeat #rootcauseprotocol #rcp #morleyrobbins
