Congratulations!! Played for and got. That plateau must have been very frustrating. I am very happy for you.
On a pedantic note, that overnight weight loss does involve breathing out water, but you're also breathing out carbon dioxide. Those are the two combustion products of fat+oxygen. Most of the difference in the amount of mass you breathe in and the amount you breathe out is the carbon.
So you're literally breathing your fat out. That's where it goes.
I have a thought related to the question you asked midway through the article -- "Had I just accidentally hit the necessary level of protein restriction with ex150?"
If you look at the gestalt picture of your weight loss it follows a hyperbolic curve; the pounds started melting off fast at the beginning and then slowed down to a more modest loss over time. The biggest interruption to the hyperbolic curve is the plateau you experienced starting in June, 2023, going to October, 2023.
That plateau started with what looks like a 15-pound spike in your weight over the course of... a week or so? And then, there was a slow decrease in your weight for months afterwards, followed by an actual plateau starting at what looks like the beginning of September and ending toward the end of October, where your weight loss trend was negligible. But the way you've talked about that period of time in some of your articles, it sounds like you're writing the whole summer off as a sort of plateau -- I would imagine because you're looking at your overall weight.
Here's the thing, though--the low you hit toward November? If you sketch the overall hyperbolic curve, your November low corresponds with the exact spot where that hyperbolic curve would have predicted it should be at that time.
There's a way to explain this that's easy enough, and it is in line with some of the things you've discussed here: imagine you have multiple weight "reservoirs" that you have to empty out to get a low weight. One (let's say it's the water reservoir) can empty or fill fast. The other (let's say it's the 'fat' reservoir) empties much slower. Your goal is to deplete both but functionally what you're really aiming for is the fat reservoir since that's the long project and also the bigger reservoir--the water reservoir fluctuates by 15 pounds give or take. If you're a scrawny 160lb male the highest the water reservoir could bloat you to is 185, which is fine. The fat one? That's the one that makes you obese.
Your graph is consistent with the idea that one reservoir (probably the fat reservoir) has been depleting consistently since you started--and was depleting consistently through September. But in June you made a decision that filled up your water reservoir and kept it topped off even as the fat continued burning.
The evidence of that is that the downward trend in your weight from June to September (if you ignore the massive spike at the start) is very similar in slope to the downward trend from March to June. And, by that token, the only real "plateau" you've had in your weight loss occurred between the beginning of September and the end of October, when your rate of loss slowed to an average of zero.
There's a way we could graph this so that I could show my point better and I'm happy to chat about it if you're interested.
A caveat here--calling one reservoir the "water reservoir" and the other the "fat reservoir" is purely arbitrary. I don't know the full mechanisms so I'm giving them names that roughly map to my understanding of weight loss. The principle -- that you have multiple sources of weight, one that fluctuates fast and the other that fluctuates slow, and the fast one can mask the slow one, but the activity of the slow one can still be inferred from the overall rate of loss -- is the same regardless of what you call them.
Regarding your question about your protein level--what if your protein intake affects the "water tank" but not the "fat tank"? So, say you did Ex225 -- you'd experience a sudden spike in weight due to the water tank filling up a bit, but your fat tank would still continue to deplete itself at the same rate. It would look like a plateau but in reality your "fat tank" would still be emptying out at the same rate.
An easy way to test this would be to do identical copies of EX150 but with systematically varied levels of protein. So, say EX75, EX150, and EX225. The hypothesis would be that each one causes a weight spike of a different magnitude, but the overall rate of loss after the spike would remain the same.
That's a long experiment though. Sometimes these things are untenable.
Also, I should note that if my theory is right, the actual rate at which you're burning fat seems like it may have sped up over the last month; your trend is breaking from the hyperbolic pattern in a good way, with accelerating weight loss.
Congrats! I think I remember in previous posts that you only have heavy cream in your coffee, and no artificial sweeteners such as stevia, monk fruit, or allulose. I'm curious, did you ever experiment to see if these sweeteners impact your weight loss?
Congratulations!! Played for and got. That plateau must have been very frustrating. I am very happy for you.
On a pedantic note, that overnight weight loss does involve breathing out water, but you're also breathing out carbon dioxide. Those are the two combustion products of fat+oxygen. Most of the difference in the amount of mass you breathe in and the amount you breathe out is the carbon.
So you're literally breathing your fat out. That's where it goes.
I have a thought related to the question you asked midway through the article -- "Had I just accidentally hit the necessary level of protein restriction with ex150?"
If you look at the gestalt picture of your weight loss it follows a hyperbolic curve; the pounds started melting off fast at the beginning and then slowed down to a more modest loss over time. The biggest interruption to the hyperbolic curve is the plateau you experienced starting in June, 2023, going to October, 2023.
That plateau started with what looks like a 15-pound spike in your weight over the course of... a week or so? And then, there was a slow decrease in your weight for months afterwards, followed by an actual plateau starting at what looks like the beginning of September and ending toward the end of October, where your weight loss trend was negligible. But the way you've talked about that period of time in some of your articles, it sounds like you're writing the whole summer off as a sort of plateau -- I would imagine because you're looking at your overall weight.
Here's the thing, though--the low you hit toward November? If you sketch the overall hyperbolic curve, your November low corresponds with the exact spot where that hyperbolic curve would have predicted it should be at that time.
There's a way to explain this that's easy enough, and it is in line with some of the things you've discussed here: imagine you have multiple weight "reservoirs" that you have to empty out to get a low weight. One (let's say it's the water reservoir) can empty or fill fast. The other (let's say it's the 'fat' reservoir) empties much slower. Your goal is to deplete both but functionally what you're really aiming for is the fat reservoir since that's the long project and also the bigger reservoir--the water reservoir fluctuates by 15 pounds give or take. If you're a scrawny 160lb male the highest the water reservoir could bloat you to is 185, which is fine. The fat one? That's the one that makes you obese.
Your graph is consistent with the idea that one reservoir (probably the fat reservoir) has been depleting consistently since you started--and was depleting consistently through September. But in June you made a decision that filled up your water reservoir and kept it topped off even as the fat continued burning.
The evidence of that is that the downward trend in your weight from June to September (if you ignore the massive spike at the start) is very similar in slope to the downward trend from March to June. And, by that token, the only real "plateau" you've had in your weight loss occurred between the beginning of September and the end of October, when your rate of loss slowed to an average of zero.
There's a way we could graph this so that I could show my point better and I'm happy to chat about it if you're interested.
A caveat here--calling one reservoir the "water reservoir" and the other the "fat reservoir" is purely arbitrary. I don't know the full mechanisms so I'm giving them names that roughly map to my understanding of weight loss. The principle -- that you have multiple sources of weight, one that fluctuates fast and the other that fluctuates slow, and the fast one can mask the slow one, but the activity of the slow one can still be inferred from the overall rate of loss -- is the same regardless of what you call them.
Regarding your question about your protein level--what if your protein intake affects the "water tank" but not the "fat tank"? So, say you did Ex225 -- you'd experience a sudden spike in weight due to the water tank filling up a bit, but your fat tank would still continue to deplete itself at the same rate. It would look like a plateau but in reality your "fat tank" would still be emptying out at the same rate.
An easy way to test this would be to do identical copies of EX150 but with systematically varied levels of protein. So, say EX75, EX150, and EX225. The hypothesis would be that each one causes a weight spike of a different magnitude, but the overall rate of loss after the spike would remain the same.
That's a long experiment though. Sometimes these things are untenable.
Also, I should note that if my theory is right, the actual rate at which you're burning fat seems like it may have sped up over the last month; your trend is breaking from the hyperbolic pattern in a good way, with accelerating weight loss.
Best,
J
Love it! Good luck!
lovely! ❤️
Congrats!!
Great stuff! Brings me a smile seeing your progress :)
Pleateus are awful man. Especially with them being variably long
Congrats! I think I remember in previous posts that you only have heavy cream in your coffee, and no artificial sweeteners such as stevia, monk fruit, or allulose. I'm curious, did you ever experiment to see if these sweeteners impact your weight loss?