The viral "Honey diet" sensation 🍯

Calories in, calories out. All experts are in agreement that if you don’t burn what you consume, you’ll store it in the form of extra pounds.

But what if the type of calories you put in, affects the amount of calories that come out? What if eating a certain way could boost your metabolism, making it impossible to keep on weight no matter how many calories you consumed?

The biohackers & bodybuilders of x.com have discovered a metabolism hack that does exactly this, and it’s the polar opposite of what you’d expect.

Welcome to the sugar-frosted world of the Honey Diet, the Fairy Princess Diet, “fruit till noon” and everything in between. This community hates seed oils almost as much as they love sugar, as PUFA is the ultimate lead-weight on your metabolism.

Below is everything you’ll ever need to know about the candy coated craze, including a written interview with the anonymous biologic-mastermind himself: @anabology

The rules are simple:

Above is the original protocol posted by @anabology that took X by storm.

From a macros perspective, this is basically exactly the same as former-carnivore Paul Saladino’s current diet. Dr. Saladino says he consumes as much as 300g of carbs per day from fruit and honey and raw milk, the rest is meat.

The crucial difference here is timing. The core mechanism that makes this diet work is time-boxing your isoleucine consumption (amino acid in muscle-protein from meat) while jacking up your fructose intake.

Collagen and bone broth are also good to go, as are homemade honey sweetened marshmallows.

A few additional rules and caveats to note:

• The fasting and timing are flexible, essentially the more time you limit protein, the more you’ll “feel” the burn. But you can eat dinner earlier if you’d like.

• Low total fat, if you consume fat MCT/Coconut oil is most pro-metabolic. ABSOLUTELY no seed oils or even EVOO. The fat from ground beef is generally enough for your daily intake, don’t go crazy with butter.

• Banned sugar sources: Dates seem to make people fat, and make sure you understand which fruits are starchy vs which are sweet (no bananas!) Overeating mangoes is also a common pitfall as they slow digestion.

• Fruit has protein: Which will slow the metabolic boost a bit, if you want to go full tilt, use more honey, agave syrup or cane sugar.

• Helper snacks: Raw carrots can be helpful to nibble on to quell the cravings you’ll get. The key is to eat as much sugar as you want though, you’ll know when to stop.

• It speeds digestion & raises your body temp: Those with slow digestion will see benefits, others may have issues

• It’s harder to stick to than it sounds. You’re starving all day long! Clear the house of out-of-protocol snacks, but don’t limit your sugar.

• Take care of your teeth: If you’re eating tons of acidic fruit, maybe rinse with baking soda occasionally.

(If you want to give the diet a try, we recommend joining the Facebook group and reddit.com/r/thehoneydiet for support, there are numerous gotchas here. At the end we’ll link to the best X accounts to follow as well)

The science of FGF21:

Unlike protein-heavy keto diets, the honey diet activates almost immediately by raising blood levels of a hormone called FGF21. The most obvious way to tell that its working for you is to take your temperature each morning. Very few Americans run at 98.6F anymore, body temperatures have been dropping for decades. If you’re doing it right, the honey diet should get you running hot again.

This same hormone is elevated during intermittent fasting. The honey diet is basically just OMAD (one meal a day) with an added insight: Fructose and MCT oil supercharge the fasting effect and cause you to burn more calories than you consume.

The way to think about this, is that foods which get metabolized in the liver (fructose and MCT fats) trick the liver into producing FGF21, because the liver thinks the whole body is seeing many calories. Starch, glucose, and longer chain saturated fats like beef tallow are not metabolized in the liver, and trigger satiety rather than hunger.

Luckily, this hormone also induces “sweet aversion”, which gives your body the stop-signal when you’re going full on Pooh-bear.

Many will be anxious about hitting their protein requirements in a single meal, but FGF21 is scientifically proven in humans not just to boost metabolism, but to “spare” muscle, meaning you actually need less protein to keep your musclemass.

In the 2025 Nature paper above, healthy men on an extremely low-protein, high-carb diet saw their FGF21 levels triple, they maintained muscle mass and lost body fat, despite eating 20% more calories to maintain weight — a clear sign their metabolisms were burning hotter. This hormone not only cranked up calorie burn, but also shifted the body into a muscle-preserving, fat-wasting mode.

You can think of FGF21 as an evolutionary mechanism designed to kick mammals into gear when they have abundant calories but zero protein, essentially a signal saying “go use this energy to run around and kill something, we’re saving the muscle till you do”.

More shirtless dudes:

Let’s get testimonials from more shirtless dudes on X before we go any further.

Fruit heavy diets have actually been practiced by bodybuilders like Mike Mentzer and Thom Platz for decades as a way to keep metabolism high.

Reportedly, the honey diet works on women as well, but we definitely have less photographic evidence.

How it all began:

@anabology is anonymous, but we’ll say he has a highly technical background, and runs a startup in the bleeding-edge field of bioelectricity. (Our team met him in person to make sure he wasn’t secretly obese, he is lean)

He began his metabolism-hacking journey when he was forced to eat KFC for weeks on end during an internship and noticed his migraines got significantly worse.

He suspected his diet and found a study suggesting seed oils could be the culprit, and it turns out he was right.

From then on he began looking for more easy “levers” on his metabolism, health and productivity. While trying to shed some of those accumulated seed oil pounds, he stumbled upon a study in rodents, in which they were basically force fed coca cola on a low protein diet. The mice couldn’t gain any weight, they metabolisms skyrocketed, and they maintained most of their muscle mass:

(Coca cola appears to work even better than honey in humans as well, see tweet)

This put him down the FGF21 rabbit hole, and eventually led to the development of the notorious honey diet protocol, a hybrid of the coca cola study and the dietary principles of Paul Saladino & Ray Peat. The protocol was published for free in 2024 that has since spread organically like wildfire.

Our full interview with Anabology on the mechanics and gotchas of the diet are below, or you can skip to a notion page of the interview here.

The case against the honey diet

It’s not all gumdrops and rainbows in honey diet land, it’s easy for people to screw up if they aren’t strict with it. This cautionary tale spells out the process in which the honey diet made one user gain weight, Anabology analyzes the pitfalls here.

Anabology also notes that insulin resistant individuals may have issues kicking into this metabolic gear, meaning they’ll just keep getting fatter.

Another anon spells out some uncited concerns with boosting FGF21 long term, including ostopenia, issues with vitamin D production and more, however Anabology notes that mice with elevated FGF21 levels live 30% longer, so the jury remains out for now.

Fructose is also a FODMAP, meaning it can cause bloating, gas, or gut discomfort in sensitive individuals — especially if eaten in large quantities or without balancing fruits carefully.

Some honey dieters report worsened gut health or unpredictable digestion until they dial in the right mix of fruits and sugars.

The honey diet, like keto, may be more of a temporary tool than a lifestyle. The effects stop as soon as you begin eating normally again, so it’s an easy metabolic “mode” to pop in and out of. Many people find the sugar rush too stressful to sustain, and should likely skip it all together.

The Fairy Princess diet & Fruit till noon:

For many, the metabolic and gut-biome changes on the honey diet are too dramatic. Influencer Noah Ryan has coined, from Mike Mentzer and other bodybuilders the term “fruit till noon”, which is essentially they honey diet with a longer protein feeding window that includes lunch.

This is much more workable for most people, and seems to make it easier to gain muscle rather than just shred fat.

“The Fairy Princess Diet” is a female-focused collaboration between anabology and notorious Peater celestiabe1ng, which is more focused on marshmallows and elaborate woodland-inspired meat-forward dinners.

Conclusions:

The discovery of the FGF21 mechanic behind the honey diet leaves us wondering what other simple health hacks are lying right under our noses.

While consuming 1lb of honey and marshmallows per day is likely not the optimal human diet, a temporary FGF21 approach is a valid alternative to GLP-1 agonists or other pharmaceuticals that kill your appetite and put you at risk of muscle loss and other nasty side effects.

Undeniably, this diet has been a game changer for many people our team has spoken to personally. Those suffering from slow digestion, IBS-C and lack of appetite are especially likely to benefit.

Whether it is dangerous long term remains to be seen, and many people will have gut issues on the diet forcing them to return to normalcy.

If you’d like to try it out, join the Facebook group and subreddit, we’ll also be answering questions in the SOS Discord.

Our list of X accounts to follow below the interview, as well as links to podcasts with Anabology.

Our interview with @anabology:

Below is our unedited written interview with Anabology, we’ll link out to a shareable version here as well.

Q: Why do you think restricting protein and adding sugar jacks up your metabolism, from an evolutionary perspective?

Restricting protein and eating a lot of sugar raises the metabolic rate because there were periods in mammalian history where calories were abundant but protein was scarce. 

If an animal eats many more calories than they burn, bad things generally happen; for example: fatty liver develops. If an animal gets too little protein, other bad things happen, such as muscle atrophy or immune dysfunction. 

When mammals only had fruit to eat, with their “normal” metabolic rate, mammals had to eat so many calories that they should have gotten a fatty liver before eating enough protein. But they didn’t. Evolution solved this.

The solution evolution used was to raise the metabolic rate when the animal eats protein deficient food, so they can reach protein sufficiency without killing themselves from caloric overload. This works through the hormone FGF21, which is induced by protein-deficient overfeeding of fat or carbs. This mechanism is conserved among nearly all mammalian species, and human studies suggest we haven’t lost the hormonal response ourselves. Besides, some monkeys are fruitarians and somehow get enough protein to be super jacked – they must be eating a ton of fruit (without getting fat).

Q: Why are seed oils so uniquely bad for our metabolism? Does olive oil slow our metabolisms?

Seed oils do many horrible things to our metabolism. One thing that even organic, cold pressed seed oils do is make fat cells more insulin sensitive while not affecting muscle cells as much: that is, your fat cells accept more calories and grow more than muscle. They make you fat.

Omega 6 fats, the primary component of most seed oils, is used by the body naturally as a precursor to inflammatory signals. Eating seed oils gives the body more ammo to cause inflammation. If you fry seed oils, the fat becomes oxidized and converted into the raw inflammatory signals. 

Drugs like acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or aspirin are known as “COX inhibitors.” COX is an enzyme that converts Omega 6 fats into inflammatory signals. Frying oils at high temperatures may spontaneously convert the Omega 6 fats into molecules that look like these inflammatory signals (isoprostanes). That is – fryer oil is pure inflammation: the anti-aspirin.

Alcohol is metabolized into a reactive molecule called acetaldehyde, which causes hangovers. Breakdown products of seed oils look like acetaldehyde (namely, 4-HNE), and are detoxed by the same system as alcohol metabolites. Fryer oil also pre-forms these substances. The anti-alcohol abuse drug, “antabuse,” blocks the breakdown of acetaldehyde, giving an instant hangover to the user if they have any alcohol. Antabuse also stops seed oil metabolism. Seed oils will eventually put you in a perpetual “hung-over” state if you store enough of them in your fat, because they overwhelm detox mechanisms.

Q: If the honey diet (high sugar, low BCAA/fat) boosts your metabolism, what does keto do to it? Is there a good analogy here? Honey diet is to Keto like X is to Y?

The honey diet is basically keto with sugar w of fat. Certain high protein carnivores like Shawn Baker are basically not in ketosis despite eating zero carbs, because they eat super high protein diets, and protein can turn into glucose in your body. True ketosis – where you are getting nearly all your energy from fat and not from protein – works remarkably like the honey diet, where the metabolic enhancing hormone FGF21 is induced and metabolic rate increases. 

The main difference that I see is that keto is more satiating, so you eat slightly less food. The honey diet is less satiating, but the hormonal response is stronger, so you eat more food naturally and still lose weight.

Q: Why no starch again?

The maximum metabolic rate increase comes from sugar. The liver is the organ that sends the signal to the rest of the body to increase the metabolic rate in response to protein deficient carbs or fat. Sugar targets the liver more directly than starch, so the liver sends a bigger signal. MCTs would do a similar thing in a protein deficient context – they should enhance a moderate protein keto diet.

Q: How does exercise play into the honey diet mechanics? Is it necessary to exercise at all to get the metabolic benefits?

Nope! Exercise is not needed, but I have noticed that I do more non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) on the honey diet than others. I wouldn’t change anything about exercise in the honey diet except maybe drink juice at the gym.

Q: Do you think mainstream gym bro protein recommendations are too high? (~1g/lb of body weight)
Under what circumstances would you eat that much protein? 

Protein much above 1-1.5 g/kg hasn’t really shown any benefit for muscle mass or body fat percentage – this corresponds to like 0.5 g/lb as optimal. Above that, your metabolism slows, people seem to run into issues with fatigue and brain fog, and there are some potential issues with chronic activation of mTOR/suppression of FGF21 that may shorten lifespan. For longevity, the lower (but sufficient) amounts of protein seem optimal, but ultra low protein is also bad. I feel strongly that 1-1.5g/kg (0.45-0.7 g/lb) is best, and above or below just worsens your disease risk and makes you feel worse. 

Q: I saw the recent article in Nature, why do you think we are just figuring this out now? How is this not something monks learned centuries ago etc.

I think that it was the Lamming Lab which really brought the possibility that protein is counter-productive forward – it took a respected lab testing lifelong protein (or just isoleucine) restriction in mice and seeing a 30%+ lifespan increase for the scientific community to take it seriously.

Q: What are the top deal-breakers for people on the honey diet, top reasons they “churn” off of it?

1. Inability to eat all day ruins it – sugar makes you quite hungry.

2. Liver health may affect outcomes. Some people have an unlimited sweet tooth. The hormone FGF21 causes both the metabolic rate increase and sugar aversion (sugar ‘satiety’) and is released from the liver seeing excess energy. Some people, and I’ve noticed they usually have bad liver markers on bloodwork, tend not to be able to reach sugar ‘satiety’ and don’t lose weight. 95% of people don’t experience this, and it’s usually hard for people to eat that much sugar.

3. Some people get worsened gut health – will take some tuning of fruits to get it right.

Q: Does the honey diet work in women? I only see twitter bros trying it for the most part.

Yes! I’ve seen many women have great success with it. Carbs are great for women, and I recommend having tasty sugary treats like candy. 

Q: Is the honey diet sustainable long term for an individual? What do you think is the healthiest long-term mix of macros for most people, assuming they’re already in decent shape and not trying to get shredded?

I think it’s sustainable long term if you find fruits and sugar-added foods (e.g., coffee) you like. Fruit til noon is a bit easier to sustain, and cheating is fine on the diet because there is no adaptation period. Long term, having lower fat or lower carbs (choosing one) seems much better than having an equal mix of macros. I find low fat and moderate protein easiest. 

Resources:

Anabology’s new podcast

Accounts to follow: anabology, thermobolic, NoahRyanCo, JoshRainerGold, exfatloss, lowmegatron 

Podcast episodes with anabology: Noah Ryan, Josh Rainer, Vance Crowe

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