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.
Interesting theory. I definitely believe in the "water tank vs fat tank" phenomenon, that's hard to deny if you've dieted for a while and experienced the short-term ups & downs.
Like you say it's hard to really determine. These experiments were mostly 30 days, and even that wouldn't REALLY be enough to tease this apart.
E.g. the dreaded September that is, as you note, my only "real" sideways plateau, I was adding 40g of collagen and then late September started working out 4x/wk. Overtraining/inflammation from the workouts is what likely caused the spike around October. When I stop the overtraining and go down to training 2x/wk (also having stopped the 40g collagen a while before) my weight suddenly plummets to where you'd expect it to be, had the whole month of September never happened.
So yea, I think it's a very viable idea that had I not changed anything or experimented at all for the entirety of summer 2023, and just done ex150 the whole time, I would be exactly where I am now, just with fewer plateaus/rises/drops in there.
What speaks for this theory is the timeline. Last time I lost 100lbs, it was over 1.5-2 years. Unfortunately I don't have good records, but I recall at least one 2 month (!) plateau in there. Of course I wasn't nearly as strict as I am now, and I was neither avoiding PUFAs nor protein on purpose, just "doing keto." Lots of restaurants and eating out since I was traveling in Asia, too.
This time I've been doing what's got to be in the top 3 of most extreme diets I've ever seen anyone attempt, more strictly than just about anyone I've ever met.
And the end result seems to follow pretty much the exact same timeline.
I think we should actually consider this the null hypothesis. Something I started doing in the beginning (dropping PUFAs? Reducing protein beneath a certain level?) just flipped the switch, and then it would've taken 2 years no matter what I did in between, as long as I didn't flip the switch back.
It's possible. I think there has to be some modifications made for the fact that when you have two tanks "full," so to speak, your rate of weight loss may speed up or slow down if there's something that causes the fast tank to increase or decrease at a slow, constant rate. But the basic two-tank idea seems like a plausible explanation, for sure.
I mentioned an alternative way to visualize your data and I think you might like it; it will give you a different way of considering how your choices affect your weight loss by allowing you to see how the broad trend changes over time. It's pretty simple -- just take the derivative of your weight data (i.e. instead of graphing your weight on any given day, graph how much your weight changed from the previous day).
The result would be a pretty messy graph but the messiness can easily be taken care of by using a simple moving average to smooth the data before you take the derivative. So, in your spreadsheet, the smoothed value for January 5th would be the average from, say, January 1st to January 9th. The value for January 6th would be the average of the 2nd to the 10th, and so on.
Doing so eliminates small fluctuations in your weight, and when you take the resulting derivative you can see the pure trend expressed in terms of how much you're losing, on average, each day.
Anyhow I've been following you on Substack for a while and I have also started trying to lose weight -- I'll be keeping track and documenting the journey as I go (and I've done similar things in the past), so I'll be happy to test some of these ideas out on myself as well. I peaked at 304 late last year and I decided that I have to work on myself for a while, and a good way to keep myself accountable is to write about it.
Best wishes, and thanks for the inspiration as well -- I'll keep following you and offer a comment here or there if I can think of something that might be helpful or encouraging.
I've visualized the derivative before, and averages too, and I don't think either of them give much insight. Averaging would be useful against a clear trend but daily fluctuations. My problem is the opposite. I have nearly no fluctuations day to day (usually within ~1lb, 2lbs is kind of a big outlier). Exceptions are obvious changes between diet experiments, fiber intake, travel, and so on. But even there the average doesn't do much.
When I visualize the derivative, it's a squiggly line that averages slightly below 0, meaning I've steadily lost weight over time. It's slightly below zero in the phases when I've lost weight, and around zero when I haven't. So nothing new there.
Haha yea. The first few longer (7+ days) ones drove me crazy. At this point I'm more experienced with the diet and it's not that tough to tough them out, hah.
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?
I very briefly tried adding monk fruit to my whipped cream, and it was terrible. It made the cream both disgusting AND not satiating at all. Weird combo, I hated it but couldn't stop lol. I haven't tried allulose.
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'm actually the real cause of climate change!
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
Interesting theory. I definitely believe in the "water tank vs fat tank" phenomenon, that's hard to deny if you've dieted for a while and experienced the short-term ups & downs.
Like you say it's hard to really determine. These experiments were mostly 30 days, and even that wouldn't REALLY be enough to tease this apart.
E.g. the dreaded September that is, as you note, my only "real" sideways plateau, I was adding 40g of collagen and then late September started working out 4x/wk. Overtraining/inflammation from the workouts is what likely caused the spike around October. When I stop the overtraining and go down to training 2x/wk (also having stopped the 40g collagen a while before) my weight suddenly plummets to where you'd expect it to be, had the whole month of September never happened.
So yea, I think it's a very viable idea that had I not changed anything or experimented at all for the entirety of summer 2023, and just done ex150 the whole time, I would be exactly where I am now, just with fewer plateaus/rises/drops in there.
What speaks for this theory is the timeline. Last time I lost 100lbs, it was over 1.5-2 years. Unfortunately I don't have good records, but I recall at least one 2 month (!) plateau in there. Of course I wasn't nearly as strict as I am now, and I was neither avoiding PUFAs nor protein on purpose, just "doing keto." Lots of restaurants and eating out since I was traveling in Asia, too.
This time I've been doing what's got to be in the top 3 of most extreme diets I've ever seen anyone attempt, more strictly than just about anyone I've ever met.
And the end result seems to follow pretty much the exact same timeline.
I think we should actually consider this the null hypothesis. Something I started doing in the beginning (dropping PUFAs? Reducing protein beneath a certain level?) just flipped the switch, and then it would've taken 2 years no matter what I did in between, as long as I didn't flip the switch back.
It's possible. I think there has to be some modifications made for the fact that when you have two tanks "full," so to speak, your rate of weight loss may speed up or slow down if there's something that causes the fast tank to increase or decrease at a slow, constant rate. But the basic two-tank idea seems like a plausible explanation, for sure.
I mentioned an alternative way to visualize your data and I think you might like it; it will give you a different way of considering how your choices affect your weight loss by allowing you to see how the broad trend changes over time. It's pretty simple -- just take the derivative of your weight data (i.e. instead of graphing your weight on any given day, graph how much your weight changed from the previous day).
The result would be a pretty messy graph but the messiness can easily be taken care of by using a simple moving average to smooth the data before you take the derivative. So, in your spreadsheet, the smoothed value for January 5th would be the average from, say, January 1st to January 9th. The value for January 6th would be the average of the 2nd to the 10th, and so on.
Doing so eliminates small fluctuations in your weight, and when you take the resulting derivative you can see the pure trend expressed in terms of how much you're losing, on average, each day.
Anyhow I've been following you on Substack for a while and I have also started trying to lose weight -- I'll be keeping track and documenting the journey as I go (and I've done similar things in the past), so I'll be happy to test some of these ideas out on myself as well. I peaked at 304 late last year and I decided that I have to work on myself for a while, and a good way to keep myself accountable is to write about it.
Best wishes, and thanks for the inspiration as well -- I'll keep following you and offer a comment here or there if I can think of something that might be helpful or encouraging.
Best,
J
I've visualized the derivative before, and averages too, and I don't think either of them give much insight. Averaging would be useful against a clear trend but daily fluctuations. My problem is the opposite. I have nearly no fluctuations day to day (usually within ~1lb, 2lbs is kind of a big outlier). Exceptions are obvious changes between diet experiments, fiber intake, travel, and so on. But even there the average doesn't do much.
When I visualize the derivative, it's a squiggly line that averages slightly below 0, meaning I've steadily lost weight over time. It's slightly below zero in the phases when I've lost weight, and around zero when I haven't. So nothing new there.
Love it! Good luck!
Thanks :)
lovely! ❤️
Thanks :)
Congrats!!
Thanks :)
Great stuff! Brings me a smile seeing your progress :)
Thanks :)
Pleateus are awful man. Especially with them being variably long
Haha yea. The first few longer (7+ days) ones drove me crazy. At this point I'm more experienced with the diet and it's not that tough to tough them out, hah.
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?
I very briefly tried adding monk fruit to my whipped cream, and it was terrible. It made the cream both disgusting AND not satiating at all. Weird combo, I hated it but couldn't stop lol. I haven't tried allulose.