ex150-16 review: washout period & starting HCLF

Bread ahead!

washout period

Just a really short one. As promised in the last post, I did 7 days of ex150 (nosauce+ACV, but I’m just calling that part of ex150 from now on) as a “washout” period. I’ve previously written about The Problem with Washout Periods.

Going from a 90% keto heavy cream diet (ex150) to a 80-90% carb HCLF diet like I’m planning, how do you “wash out?” Glycogen and other water retention levels swing wildly between these 2, so there doesn’t seem to be a “neutral” point or diet to wash out with.

On the other hand, I had just binged on a 5 day refeed after ex150salmon and I think any stable, previously-successful mono-diet is probably a decent washout from that.

So I did ex150 again, but only for 7 days, and transitioned into a HCLF diet from that. I actually did a “day of transition” that I started with heavy cream in coffee, then switched to rice later in the day. Mostly for convenience, tbh. I still had some cream around.

Today I’m actually on day 3 of full-on HCLF and it’s going pretty well so far.

Tale of the Tape

So, did I lose all of my refeed weight during those 7 days? No.

This is curious because:

• I’ve previously rapidly dropped any refeed weight when going back on ex150, coming at least very, very close to pre-refeed lows within 7 days

• This pattern was noticeably broken at the beginning of ex150salmon

Of course, it could be a total coincidence, but maybe the salmon is somehow at fault? Who knows.

Here’s what actually happened.

You can see I had reached a new all-time low of <207lbs during the last bout of ex150nosauce+ACV, at the end of which I’d eaten salmon instead of beef for 5 days (hence the idea to try ex150salmon).

While I did lose half the weight gained during the refeed during ex150salmon rapidly, the weight loss stopped much more quickly, and I didn’t even get close to my previous low in 14 days, the lowest being just under 212lbs.

After quitting the salmon I did another carby refeed, and once again, I got incredible satiety and therefore took much longer than planned. I’m just not used to the satiety I’ve been getting these last 2 refeeds, and the food lasts forever.

Again, 7 days of ex150 (with beef this time) brought me down only about half the refeed weight I’d gained.

Honestly, this could just be related to the refeed length and glycogen replenishment? Not sure.

Anyway, after 7 days of ex150 I decided that this was enough washout and transitioned to HCLF without a single cheat day, unless you count mixing cream in the morning and carbs the rest of the day as swampy cheating.

Expectations for HCLF

I do expect some weight gain just from increased water retention and fiber. Hopefully this will just be 5-10lbs, and then my weight should stabilize and plateau.

Do I expect to lose fat on HCLF? Not necessarily. It would be cool, of course, but the way I’ve planned it is significantly higher in protein than ex150. That might prevent any fat loss.

I’d frankly be happy not gaining too much fat doing this, especially if it actually turns out to deplete my stored adipose linoleic acid by a significant amount. Of note, one month won’t be enough to see much of an effect in PUFA depletion. I’d have to do this for maybe 6 months at least. Refeeds inbetween should be ok, but it just takes quite a bit of time even on HCLF I suspect.

Worst case, I’ll gain some non-PUFA fat and lose it later, which my friend John actually suspects will speed up PUFA depletion from body fat.

Isn’t there PUFA in whole grains & oats?

A brief recap, here’s my plan for ex150hclf:

• Same 150g ground beef & vegetables a day, but use 90/10 beef instead of my usual 80/20 and cook without any butter or added fat

• Instead of cream, ad-lib rice and bread

• 1/2 cup (dry) beans or lentils a day (I had planned 1 cup originally, but 1 dry cup is WAY too much)

• Oats for convenience, mostly for breakfast

Both oats and whole-grain flour contain some PUFAs:

• 100g oats contain about 2.3g PUFAs (mostly linoleic acid)

• A pound of whole wheat flour contains about 5.3g PUFA (again mostly LA)

I like making bread with about a 50/50 mix of whole grain and white flour, and I’ll limit myself to 1-2 small servings of oats a day.

Combined with the whole point of this experiment being that HCLF forces your body to use the available fats up instead of re-esterifying them, I’m hoping this won’t be a problem.

Also, even 2,000kcal worth of heavy cream contain about 5.4g of LA, so at least in comparison, it’s not that bad - it’s just very hard to actually get to 0% linoleic acid, even if you try very hard. And this diet is supposed to be a bit more sustainable than my pure plain rice diet, which I’d classify more as a “daring adventure” than a sustainable diet.