Hey,

I want to bring you into something I’ve been thinking about for a long time…

There’s an entire body of work by the late Dr. Ray Peat that, if properly understood, would completely transform the way you look at nutrition, health, stress, metabolism, aging, even psychology.

So I’ve decided to start sharing it with you, piece by piece, each week. Think of it like a “Ray Peat Weekly Lesson”-simple, practical, actionable breakdowns of some of the most important insights from his work.

This is Lesson #1.

Topic: Coconut Oil.

Why Coconut Oil?

Coconut oil is one of the most misunderstood foods of our time. For years, it’s been vilified-lumped into the same category as “bad fats” simply because it’s a saturated fat.

But when you actually understand what coconut oil is and how it works in the body, especially in contrast to unsaturated seed oils (think soybean, corn, canola, safflower), you see it’s not the enemy at all. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Let me explain...

1. Coconut Oil is Stable - It Doesn't Go Rancid

Most cooking oils - especially the polyunsaturated ones (PUFAs) - oxidize very quickly. That means they go rancid easily, even in your refrigerator. And once inside your body, they break down under heat and oxygen, forming what’s called lipid peroxides - toxic compounds that accelerate aging, inflammation, and cellular damage.

Coconut oil? It doesn’t do that.

Even after sitting out at room temperature for a year, it resists oxidation. Why? Because it’s mostly saturated fat - a stable, tightly packed molecular structure that doesn’t easily react with oxygen.

A better way to think about it:

Picture a ripe tropical fruit left whole vs. one that’s been sliced open and left in the sun.

The whole fruit stays intact - preserved, resilient, full of life.

The cut fruit browns, spoils, and breaks down.

Coconut oil is like the whole fruit - stable and protective.

Seed oils are like the cut fruit - unstable, quick to spoil, and prone to rot.

And once inside your body, those unstable oils do the same thing - they oxidize and create internal rust, damaging your tissues from the inside out. That’s lipid peroxidation.

2. It Increases Your Metabolism

Coconut oil is made up of short and medium-chain fatty acids, like lauric acid, caprylic acid, and myristic acid.

These fatty acids behave very differently than the long-chain fatty acids in most other oils. For one, they’re quickly absorbed and don’t require carnitine to enter the mitochondria (the powerhouses of your cells). That means they get burned for energy almost immediately.

This speeds up your metabolism. It also explains why:

In the 1940s, farmers tried to fatten animals with coconut oil…

But instead of getting fat, the animals became lean, active, and hungry.

So they switched to feeding animals corn and soy-PUFA-rich feeds-which do suppress metabolism and make them fat. (Yes, the same oils now being sold to humans as “heart-healthy.”)

3. It Supports the Thyroid

The thyroid is like the thermostat of your body. If it’s low, everything slows down-digestion, energy, body temperature, even mood.

Seed oils suppress thyroid function by interfering with enzymes and damaging mitochondria. Coconut oil restores function by doing the opposite.

It:

Protects the thyroid from PUFA damage

Enhances the body’s use of thyroid hormone

Increases conversion of cholesterol into protective hormones (like pregnenolone and progesterone)

4. It Helps You Burn Fat, Not Store It

Here’s the big paradox:

You can eat more fat, yet lose more body fat-if it’s the right fat.

Coconut oil does not get stored easily as body fat. It’s burned for energy. In fact, it can help reduce fat stored in the liver and increase glycogen storage (your body’s way of storing usable sugar).

Dr. Peat personally noticed this:

“My weight was steady for 25 years at 185 lbs. After starting coconut oil daily, it gradually dropped to 175-without changing anything else in my diet (including eating a quart of ice cream daily).”

5. It May Protect the Brain

Brain aging is heavily tied to lipid peroxidation-oxidative damage to fat-based structures in your cells.

Because coconut oil resists peroxidation, it helps protect brain tissue. In animal studies, when pregnant mice were fed coconut oil instead of seed oils, their offspring had healthier, more developed brains.

Ray Peat even suggested this may play a role in preventing conditions like Alzheimer’s, where oxidative stress is a central factor.

6. It Boosts Immunity

Many of the fatty acids in coconut oil-especially lauric acid-have strong antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal effects.

Hospitals actually use coconut oil derivatives (like MCT oil) in intravenous feeding because it supports the immune system, unlike PUFAs which can suppress it.

7. It Lowers “Bad” Cholesterol - But the Right Way

Unlike seed oils, which artificially lower cholesterol by damaging the liver and increasing risk of cancer, coconut oil does it differently.

It improves thyroid function, which encourages the body to use cholesterol as a building block for important hormones (like progesterone and pregnenolone), rather than hoarding it in the blood.

This is why coconut-eating cultures (like in the Philippines or Yucatan) have low cholesterol levels and high thyroid function, even while consuming saturated fats daily.

What You Can Do

If you’re eating seed oils-whether from processed foods or your own cooking oils (canola, soybean, sunflower, safflower)-the #1 thing you can do to protect your metabolism, brain, thyroid, and aging process is:

Remove seed oils. Replace with coconut oil.

Start with 1 tablespoon per day. Use it for cooking. Mix it into your rice or potatoes. Use it in smoothies or even eat it off the spoon if you want.

Quality matters: Look for unrefined, cold-pressed, or centrifuged coconut oil. Avoid anything labelled “partially hydrogenated.”

Wrapping This Up

I’m going to keep these weekly lessons simple and actionable. My goal is to slowly expose you to the core principles of energy, metabolism, and stress that shaped my own understanding of health.

Coconut oil is just the first chapter, which was inspired from this Ray Peat article.

Aleks

P.S. Let me know if you try incorporating coconut oil. Would love to hear what changes you notice-energy, sleep, digestion, appetite, etc. Everyone’s experience is a little different, but the benefits are usually very noticeable, very quickly.

0 comments

Write a comment

You downloaded the eBook. Now what?

See all posts from Aleks Fidurski