Ease into high fat consumption

Don't be afraid of eating high fat. But take your time if you're not used to it.

“man eating butter with a spoon” as generated by Substack. Not sure where the man went. And is that another spoon made of butter on the left? Guess that’s AI for ya.

tl;dr:

• If you’re diabetic/take blood sugar medication, TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR before starting ex150

• ex150 is highly ketogenic and will dump your blood sugar

• If you’re not used to eating a lot of fat, it could take 1-2 weeks for your gallbladder to start excreting enough bile to help digest the fat

• If you’re used to eating moderate/high amounts of fiber, it could take 1-2 weeks for your intestine to get used to the new, lower food volume and you could get constipated

• Solution: take it slow. If you experience any such problems, don’t be afraid to ease into it over 1-2 weeks. Just increase cream by 1-2 copious shots in your coffee/sauce per day. Decrease fiber gradually as well.

• If you don’t do well on dairy/cream, don’t eat a lot of cream. This isn’t a purity test. There are plenty of other fats you could be using.

A reader mentioned that he’s been trying ex150, but has a hard time getting down all the heavy cream.

Sometimes I forget that I’ve been doing keto for 7+ years. And even after years of keto I had to adapt to a super-high fat version.

Our bodies have to adapt when we change our diet. The first time I ate meat after being a vegetarian and then vegan, for nearly a year, made me puke. Nowadays I’m adapted to eating so little fiber that eating “normal people food” feels very bloating and gives me constipation.

To my knowledge the main factor in our ability to digest fat is the gallbladder.

“The main functions of the gallbladder are to store and concentrate bile, also called gall, needed for the digestion of fats in food.” - From Wikipedia

It stores a tiny amount of bile. When fatty foods are detected in your intestines the gallbladder releases the bile and pumps it into your small intestine, emulsifying the fat and helping digest it. The intestines are very long and nutrients are absorbed through the walls as they pass along.

If you haven’t had a lot of fat in a long time, your gallbladder probably got used to that. Now it’ll have to get used to doing a lot more work again. Give it some time.

Remember, after the stomach everything is liquid chyme. If you have a lot of liquid fat in your intestines, and not enough bile to help digest it before it reaches the end… guess what happens.

While we’re at it: ease out of fiber slowly

This is another thing that I often forget because I’ve lived in the keto/carnivore world for so long. Fiber also plays a major role in your intestine.

My understanding is that there are 2 major ways that bowel movements are triggered. The first is sheer volume/pressure on the intestinal walls. The other is high fat content. Some people, even nutritionists, seem to believe you can’t go #2 without fiber. This is false. Ask any carnivore.

BUT: it takes some time to switch over. Since fiber soaks up water and swells up to multiples of its original size, it is one of, if not the, major factor in distending your intestinal walls. If you previously ate a lot (or even a “normal” amount) of fiber and you suddenly stop, then the bowel movement signal your intestine is used to will suddenly stop. You will get constipated.

If you now add a gallbladder that was just woken from years of slumber, you end up with a very bad combination in a TMI way. If you catch my drift.

ex150 is very, very high fat and very, very low fiber. In fact, if you check the macros, it features 88% of calories from fat (DRI recommends 20-35%) and only 2.7g fiber (DRI recommends 38g).

The answer is to slowly decrease fiber, and to increase fat intake slowly as well. I think 2 weeks should be plenty. If you’re still getting digestive issues, take it even slower. Just add a cup of coffee with a copious shot of heavy cream every day or even every other day. With fiber it can be somewhat hard to know how much of it you’re eating - might be worth to plug a typical day into Cronometer or Nutritionix and find out.

For comparison: a single potato has 3.8g of fiber according to Nutritionix, or 40% more than an entire day of ex150.

Interestingly leafy, green vegetables don’t actually have super high fiber. You’d need to eat a whole pound of broccoli to get 15g of fiber.

Don’t tolerate cream? Don’t eat tons of cream

Some people just don’t do well on dairy in general. There seem to be many different levels of dairy intolerance. Some can’t eat cheese, or drink milk, but cream is fine. Some can’t deal with cream, but butter is fine. Some can’t deal with butter, but ghee (clarified butter) is fine. Maybe there are people who can’t even do that.

Since the dose makes the poison, it can be hard to know beforehand. If you have always had huge problems with even small amounts of dairy then you’re probably not going to love half a quart of cream per day.

Some people do fine on a little bit of dairy, but if they overdo it it causes issues. If this is the case you’ll have to observe as you go along.

Don’t make yourself sick, obviously. Any big change in your diet will cause some digestive re-arrangements and getting used to. But if you’re pretty sure you don’t do dairy well then don’t do ex150 with lots of cream.

This is not a purity test. I don’t care if you lose fat doing a handstand and yodling while munching on a bowl of cereal, as long as you lose fat. Let’s not turn it into one of those cults where the first response to “it doesn’t work” is “you must be doing it wrong.”

There might be other sources of saturated fat that work better for you, such as:

• Butter

• Ghee (clarified butter)

• Beef tallow (emulsify/blend into hot broth to make a soup)

• Beef trimmings or suet (you can fry these, delicious)

• Cocoa butter

• Coconut oil

I’d recommend staying with largely saturated fats, since one of my main hypotheses is that polyunsaturated fats are the cause of obesity. That hypothesis might be wrong. But if you used soybean oil, which is heavily polyunsaturated, and the hypothesis is true, then “ex150pufa” probably wouldn’t work for you. Within animal fats I’d stick with ruminants like cow, goat, that sort of thing. Pork and chicken fat (at least in the U.S.) can contain some of the PUFAs from the soybean oil & meal that is often put in their feed.

If you find something besides cream that works great, please let me know! I personally just do super fine on seemingly infinite amounts of dairy, and heavy cream is very convenient. But I’d love to hear what other people are using, both to have more options myself, and to make the whole thing more accessible to people who don’t tolerate dairy well.

Diabetic/take blood sugar medication? Careful!

ex150 is 4.2% calories from carbs. That’s extremely low. Because it is also super low protein, it is ketogenic af.

If you’re currently eating a normal/high-carb diet, ex150 will dump your blood glucose like crazy. That’s not inherently bad - unless you’re already taking medication for your blood sugar, or injecting insulin. In that case it could severely interfere and you could put yourself in danger.

So if you’re diabetic, or currently using medication for your blood sugar, I recommend talking to your doctor.

Say you’re interested in trying a highly ketogenic diet. Most doctors know what that means, especially in the context of diabetes. Work with your doctor to appropriately change the dosage of your medication.

We don’t want you hurting yourself.

Keto Flu

Some people experience something called “keto flu” when they first go ketogenic. It’s not really the flu, it just makes you feel miserable for a few days up to a week or two.

Many have had success combatting it by using plenty of elecrolytes. When you go ketogenic, the salt balance in your body shifts quite a bit, so you might have to add more salt than before.

Personally I never experienced a noticeable keto flu. Not everybody gets it. But I had been dabbling in regular low-carb/Atkins style diets for years when I first tried keto, so maybe I had just gotten over it already.

If you do get a weird feeling, headaches, maybe slight dizzyness: that’s keto flu. Make sure you drink enough water, add some salt or electrolyte mix (usually salt, potassium, magnesium). It should clear up from anything between a few days to 2 weeks.

All’s Well that Ends Well

Literally as I was writing this post, the reader I mentioned in the beginning (hi there!) reported in. It was day 6 and the issues with high fat consumption were gone. So it took him slightly less than a week to adapt to the higher fat content of ex150.

He also reported that he lost a bunch of weight, much of which he contends will be water weight.

And he’s experiencing this weird feeling where he looks at food, and he doesn’t want to eat it.

Strange, I know. Could it be.. satiety?