70 Comments
Apr 23·edited Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

still reading, but want to second you the melatonin thing - my experience is that 3-5mg is WAY too much, and that you want more like 300 mcg, (pretty sure newer studies support the lower dosage regimen) and even then, only "as needed to reset sleep windows" rather than "every night forever"

"It could be that there’s some sort of self-limiting body fat dynamic at work, which would explain why people yo-yo so much when dieting."

Also my experience, I repeatedly plateau until I do a 2-4 day fast. Please don't make this into an experiment on yourself, but would various "cheats" like that cryo-therapy or liposuction "work" (in the physical sense, not in the "I-recommend-this" sense) in this case? If you had a low-PUFA diet, but had (as you describe) a bunch of old bad PUFA-rich fat cells, could you liposuction them out and skip the "“battle” the broken cells" stage? Or perhaps less surgically, might the autophagy that fasting people are always talking about wipe out those cells in a "they don't dump their LA back into your blood" way?

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100% on the melatonin. I took a 3mg tablet once and it knocked me out for 12h, after which I woke up with a splitting headache and feeling like I hadn't slept in 5 days. Totally wrecked me. The 500mcg is noticeable, but mild. And like you suggested, it was somewhat self limiting, I intuitively stopped feeling like I needed it after 7-10 days.

I'm super skeptical of liposuction. I don't now, it just sounds like physical damage to me lol. Even if it worked, I'd rather to it the normal route and take an extra 6-12 months, I think.

I think fasting just increases lipolysis, so if anything, you'd dump more LA into your blood, faster. I think this is why metabolically healthy people can fast for days on end, whereas metabolically fucked people can barely fast for a day.

I could fast for 5 days easy at 200lbs, did 7 days once. At 300lbs, I couldn't fast 2 days. You would think it'd be the opposite. But LA from adipose tissue would explain it.

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Yeah I don't like surgery or needles or any of that stuff, so I am 100% no-thanks on liposuction, I'm just trying to figure out the mechanics of a way to skip (or at least speed-run) the negative effects of "get LA dumped back into your blood" step. Is there a non-horrible-surgery way to get your body to expel or burn it instead of building new cells with it? Here's where my complete lack of biochem knowledge fails me.

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Well, my hope was that eating omega-3 salmon would help counter it, but this experiment seems to show the opposite..

I wonder if my high SFA consumption via beef and heavy cream is a way to "speedrun" it. I haven't seen any other diet that so systematically crushes appetite and induces fat loss, and also lets you safely "stall" w/o weight regain pretty much no matter how many carolies you consume.

Maybe the secret is to drown the PUFAs with SFAs.

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

“Maybe the secret is to drown the PUFAs with SFAs.” I like this scientific theory because it aligns with my desire for scientific theories to be tasty

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I don't have enough WAT (or money lmao) to seriously consider liposuction, but at this point it's starting to look more similar to an urgent appendectomy than it is to say a face lift or gastric bypass. If you tell someone he has an organ that has gone bad and is pumping poison into his system and it needs to be surgically removed, he looks skeptical until you tell him the organ in question is his appendix. Why? Because it's normal now.

In my youth I knew an old man whose father had been skeptical of newfangled procedures like appendectomies, and let his six-year-old child suffer through without. He'd survived -- he was the old man I was talking to. I'm not sure what the survival rate for appendicitis was before surgery, but I'm sure it was higher than our biases would suggest. Now, what's the rate of nonsurgical reversal of obesity? Not great, my dudes, not great.

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Sure but removing an inflamed appendix will definitely stop it from poisoning you. I feel like you might be describing more bariatric surgery? If you just remove a bunch of fat, but keep eating bad stuff, the fat is just going to come back.

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Lol yeah if you had 10 appendixes and kept eating kill-your-appendix food removing one wouldn't help, either.

No, I'm talking about how stored body fat keeps you fat, even if you're trying to do the right thing. Guaranteed that not laboriously burning all the stored PUFAs (while nuking your metabolism and cell membranes with them) for years would be better -- the problem is the methods are crude.

As an intuition pump, imagine a nanobot version of liposuction that goes only into WAT and hoovers up only triglycerides that contain PUFAs, then carries them somewhere to be carefully excreted. Let's say it does this at a rate of maybe 2% per day, so you're done in less than two months. This would obviously be a massive W.

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Apr 23·edited Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Right, that's what I'm aiming for, something... less crude. I'm 100% all in on the nanobots for so many reasons, but until they come out on Amazon, is there some in-between I can go with? Can I overdose on the healthy fats while I'm losing that old fat, and it'll push the bad fats out of the way? Is there some chemical or protein that'll bind to the LA and render it inoperable? If my kids punch me really hard in the stomach, will that convince the fat there to leave? The actual science of the mechanics here is above my pay grade.

What about this stuff? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoolSculpting

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I love fish of all kinds. My suggestion for the smell is to soak the fish in milk (either to thaw or just 20-30 minutes or so). As long as it's not days old, it works beautifully to take the "fishiness" out of the fish. I prefer to bake it or also good in air fryer.

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Perhaps the real causal link is that nobody who is hooked on seed oils can tolerate how plain fish tastes. All the worst fried-food-and-twinkie offenders I've known would rather eat dirt than a piece of fish. A bit like Mozaffarian's findings on yogurt -- if you can tolerate it you're probably healthy. If your response is "yuck this is sour and slimy" you're probably fugged.

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Also maybe Whole Foods is just lying and you were eating soybean-oil fish with red dye in it.

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Yea could be. Or just that the market is super fraudulent, like olive oil, and WF can't do shit about it.

About the yogurt thing: I've always been a massive yogurt fiend, even plain. Especially the sour stuff! I always liked the sour plain one much better than the milder, non-sour "greek" yogurt.

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Apr 28Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Last summer I started a 6 month experiment having 1 oz of salmon roe/day plus 6 oz of fatty fish at least tiwce a week. For fatty I used wild arctic char mostly ( it's quite fatty and delicious). I also occasionally used fish oil.

My goal was to improve osteoarthritis in an ankle and it did help for a while then the opposite began to happen. By month 4-5 my joints were slowly getting stiffer and heading back into the terriotory I was in before I got serious about no seed oils.

Of course my omega 3 scores on omegaquant were fantastic ...right at the top of the ideal range.,,,for what that's worth.

I stopped this experiment about 3 months ago and my joints have been improving. I still eat fish occassionally and use salmon roe a maybe 4 times a week but I will not try again to blow my omega 3 levels out of the water.

Oh yes....one more problem I noticed was my eyesight which had improved to the point of no need for glasses to drive took a nosedive. I now use my glasses to drive.

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Interesting. Maybe there's a happy medium but it's relatively low?

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Apr 29Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I agree….relatively low especially when seed oil intake is low.

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Apr 27Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

>gains lean mass

>loses fat mass

>becomes anti fish

There is a little place called /fit/ where you would be called some colourfull names for this one

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Haha if you say it like that.. I guess I was expecting to lose 4lbs again like the previous month ;)

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Apr 25Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Idea for some future experiment: do the regular ground beef regimen but add in flaxseeds instead of fish. You get the shorter-chain α-linolenic acid and there’s no bad taste (in my opinion). Just mix them in with iced coffee or straight cream or whatever.

I’ve been mixing in 2 Tbsp of ground flaxseeds into my kefir for lunch every day. To me they don’t taste like anything.

Those 2 Tbsp have 3g of α-linolenic acid. But also 750mg of linoleic. By contrast a 115g salmon filet only has 775mg of ω-3 (combo of EPA and DHA but more DHA than EPA). The flax also has 400mg of BCAA so not sure if that’s a problem for you.

I don’t expect you to like my suggestion. 😄

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Haha I don't :D

Do you notice any difference with the flax?

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Apr 25Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I mean, it’s tough to say. I dropped a couple pounds after the first week, but I was simultaneously trying to eliminate all ω-6 I could. I’m already pretty skinny so 2 lbs is a lot. I thought I slept better, but that’s pretty subjective.

I’ve had a couple of high-seed-oil snacks and have noticed those absolutely destroying me (disrupting sleep or just making me feel like garbage).

It doesn’t seem to be hurting anything so I figure I’ll keep going with it. I like that I don’t have to eat fish to get the ω-3 this way.

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Apr 24Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Wanted to ask what brand of heavy cream do you buy (I'm not too keen on trying salmon after this).

Because I'm a bit concerned about conservatives and such.

Great post as always :)

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Apr 24Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Just buy it from Whole Foods, no conservatives since only liberals shop there ;) Dairy products are usually preserved by heating, some cream contains emulsifiers, if you want to avoid those the label should list only one ingredient.

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Apr 24Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I don't have a Whole Foods close by, just checked, my supermarket only offers regular and whipping cream. 😖

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I buy store brand heavy cream. It has gellan gum, which seems fine. If you have to choose between carrageenan and gellan gum, I'd pick the latter. If not... try if carrageenan causes you issues? Apparently it does upset digestion for some people.

The whole foods cream with only 1 ingredient is great, but it's extremely expensive, like $10 for a bottle. I don't usually get it.

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Apr 25Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I have been buying the Great Value brand at Walmart. Budget friendly at $6/qt but has carrageenan *and* mono and diglycerides and cellulose gum. 🙃

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Target tends to have a pretty decent one and is widely available.

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Apr 26Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I found two whipping creams one has 25% fat and the other 29%. Both have carrageenan and gellan gum and other stuff. Do you think they'd still work for a run of ex150?

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Could try it. I'd try the 29% one, that sounds like it's on the lower end of what I know as heavy cream.

Just do it for 30 days, say. If you get stomach issues, it could be the carrageenan. But not everybody gets those, maybe you're fine.

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Apr 26Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Got it. Do you think a good litmus test is to see if it whips? Also just to get a feel for how much I'll need to buy, wanted to double-check that you consume ~500ml a day (if I remember correctly).

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Apr 25Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

It should also mention the fat percentage on the label, you should probably shoot for something at or above 36%. It also differs by country, in Germany you can't get more than 36% (most are around 30%) in regular supermarkets, while in the UK you can easily get to 40% or more.

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Yea, here they also tend to be 30-36%. I think it becomes somewhat solid above that, I've had the "clotted cream" the brits have and that's like 50 or 52% and it's totally solid.

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Apr 26Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I found one whipping cream but only has 25% fat and has a lot of added conservatives. Do you reckon it can still work?

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What are the macros on it and the ingredients? 25% sounds very low, I don't know if it would whip up.

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Apr 26Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

For every 100g is has:

• 315,93 kcal

• 3g protein

• 31.3g fat

• 21.7g fat

• 5.5g carbs

I unfortunately don't have the ingredients. Will take a picture of them next time I go shopping.

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Apr 24Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

You make salmon sound like a superfood! Lose fat, gain muscle, tastes great

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Yea but not enough gained, not enough lost, doesn't taste as great as beef ;) So it's worse at everything!

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This doesn't sound like a failure, you've gained muscle and lost fat! Gaining muscle is not surprising for a young man who's diligently working out, and it's heavy stuff. Shame about the omega-3 poisoning, but if you will flirt with the polyunsaturated abomination.....

Fish-taste-wise I am surprised by your reaction, I don't eat much salmon but whenever I do eat it I'm always surprised by how nice it is when grilled with butter, a lovely delicate taste.

Mind you the salmon I buy comes in chunks in packets, much like steaks. As long as it's got the RSPCA symbol I'm fine with whatever.

In my youth I knew how to gut and bone fish from scratch (caught trout mostly). It shouldn't smell bad even then, but you absolutely have to get rid of anything you aren't planning to eat immediately. You can hardly blame it for stinking as it's rotting in the bin. Imagine if you put a load of cow's guts in there!

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It's not actual fish stinking up the trash, it's the plastic wrapper the fish filet came in. Even though I rinse them out with hot water and soap. Beef plastic wrappers don't ever smell that bad, even w/o the soap rinse.

I'm doubtful on the "gained muscle and lost fat" part. DEXA's just kinda noisy, we don't have an actual short-term way of measuring "muscle" since muscle is 85% water. Hence why I'm so down on this experiment. It feels like the upside is mostly a statistical artifact.

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

p > 0.8

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Jun 15·edited Jun 15Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Very interesting.

One random thing jumped out at me though: you mention the sunburn happened on a "partly cloudy day". A lot of people assume this will mean less UV exposure and less sunburn, which is true when it is very overcast. Counterintuitively, there are many reports that partly cloudy skies actually increase UV exposure. You can find several studies confirming this, sometimes using the term "broken cloud effect", though that seems to be more common in popsci reporting on it than in actual studies.

So if you spent the same number of hours on that partly cloudy day vs on a clear day and saw different results, that might also be part of it.

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Hm, that could be it for sure. The other day I spent 2 hours around noon in bright sun, and about 2 months have passed since so the sun would be more intense. Nothing, not even pinkish.

But maybe it's the effect you mention. I do generally feel better w/o the daily fish, that's for sure. No cramps, no headaches since then.

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May 16Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Ex, where are you with fish oil supplements? Is there any downside/negatives to taking a fish oil pill? I've taken them in the past and am considering taking them again. I've been doing the Ex150 diet for about 9 months so I have not eaten any fish and have not taken fish oil pills during that time and just wanted to know if you've heard or found any negatives with fish oil pills. Thanks.

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Personally, I wouldn't touch fish oil with a 6ft (fishing) pole. Even many of the pro-fish people I talk to are against the extracted oils, although there also doesn't seem to be terrifying data proving them bad.

I think that everything potentially bad with fatty fish is probably worse with fish oil. So I wouldn't do it. If you do believe that omega-3 intake is helpful in managing the balance, I'd stick to occasional (1-3x/wk) wild fish.

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May 29Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Exactly why I asked. Thanks for replying. I'm steering clear of fish oil supplements.

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May 7Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Great experiment! Now I already know not to bother with that one myself 🙌

Have you ever tried eggs? They are lower in protein and methionine. You could eat 6 eggs for 36g protein. Might feel like more food…

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I haven't as part of ex150, it was on the list for a while but there are just so many other things I'd want to try first..

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Apr 26Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Re sunburn: I'm wondering what is the mechanism for low-PUFA to protect against sunburn. If it just hides the symptoms of underlying damage, then it would probably be worthwhile to wear sunscreen anyway. Even if it prevents some damage, it seems unlikely to me that it would prevent the UV radiation from directly damaging DNA / causing skin cancer.

https://www.livescience.com/20743-photo-sun-damage-skin-cancer.html

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My understanding is it DOES prevent the UV radiation from causing damage. The damage to skin is apparently oxidized phospholipids in skin cells. Some would probably argue that it's the o3 vs. o6 balance in the phospholipids, but if the salmon really did me in, and others argue, o3 oxidizes just as fast or faster. Just from it having more double bonds, that's sort of what you'd expect? Or maybe the salmon was sneakily infested with lots of o6, or it was something different altogether.

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Apr 24Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

> you can’t burn the shit out of salmon like I do with my beef

Wait, you are doing your *ground* beef well done ? Please tell me I’ve understood wrong.

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I'm doing my ground beef "burned to a crisp." It's probably fair to describe it as "deep frying in half an inch of tallow/butter."

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Apr 24Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

Ground beef is good when well done. Don't believe those who tell you all beef has to be raw - it's a trap!

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Apr 23Liked by Experimental Fat Loss

I wonder if fresh fish would have different effects than frozen. I also wonder whether I should continue taking my high-DHA fish oil pills.

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You can probably imagine my opinion on fish oil pills ;)

Some people suggested fresh fish, others said that it's even more difficult to get high quality fresh compared to frozen.

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