are you still doing this diet? if so, what are your stats? are you hungry all the time or no? are you using organic / pasture raised / grass fed dairy or meats?
Yea, still doing it :) I basically still do the same thing, except my cream consumption has intuitively gone up as I've lost more fat (down 70-75lbs now). I'm never hungry since I usually eat cream to satiety. I've played around and am currently doing grass fed beef, but regular cream. It's somehow much easier to find good beef than good cream, it seems, maybe since almost nobody seems to buy cream lol.
Oh interesting. I've never actually seen anything sold as "light cream" usually only "heavy cream" and "heavy whipping cream." So maybe the 30% is considered light?
Let me know how it goes :) Can you email me your results after you've tried it? However long that is (if it doesn't work and you quit, lmk! That's a good data point as well). Just email hello@exfatloss.com. Thanks. Happy to answer any questions via email, too.
So this was interesting to me, and I'm starting a trial. I'm 67 yo male, 5' 8". In 2017 I had a brush with cancer (fine now, heh), and hit 263lbs and just shy of a 40 BMI. Dirty keto, intermittent and extended fasting got me down to 175 in May of 2018 (by which time we had temporarily moved to Mexico. 2021 was our last year there, and a combination of stress and FOMO (it's incredibly cheap to eat out or in in Mexico, as long as your not in a tourist city), combined with a year of returning to, and refurbishing our California house (it was rented out while we were gone for 4 years) saw me peaking at 136 on January 2nd of 2023. No big deal, right? I just started rolling 2.5-3.5 day fasts (water and Diet Coke btw). interspersed with 1 to 2 days where I consciously strove to get ~2500-3000 kcal a day. That's eas--well, do-able. Not eating at all does get in your head after a while. So I ran across your sub stack through the r/saturated fat group and it was intriguing. Keto as she should be, if you will. I'm pretty much following your lead (150 gems 80/20 hamburger, 60 grams spinach wilted with it, and about 60g of a 'clean' marinara), regarding the one (very small, but better than nothing) meal. As I don't enjoy coffee (outside of a tiramisu), I'm making an iced matcha latte with 2 tsp matcha powder and one and a half to two cups of heavy cream, and sip on that through the day. Once it's gone, either water or maybe a slug or two of cream. The first 2 days showed waterfasting-like results (1.75-2 lbs lost each day--yes likely mostly water, but the same as I would be seeing at the start of an extended fast). Today is a family meal out, so I'll make the latte and skip the ground beef, watching what I eat at the restaurant. Then tomorrow back at it.
Nice! Did you mean you peaked at 236lbs in January? 136 sounds too low if it's pounds ;)
I had the same experience when fasting - it gets in your head. I was thinking about food all day every day starting day 3 or so. Caught myself browsing the internet for pictures of steak all day.
So the one meal, even if tiny, really makes a big psychological difference for me I think. Even compared to an all-fat fast, which this is relatively close to.
Also one thing is that I enjoy cooking, and this way I still get to cook every day. Just kind of a nicer routine to have.
Agreed on the quick water loss results. It's water, so that rate won't continue forever, but hey losing water is still good! You can definitely see water loss in the mirror and your waistline.
If I were you, I'd expect to lose water for maybe 5 days, and then the rate should go down to maybe 1/2 or 1/3 the initial water loss rate. For me it was about 1lb/day of water, and now it's about .3lb/day sustainably.
Yes, 236 (poor editing skills). I'll keep you posted--I did leave out BG & K readings (finger stick) they are not as dramatically lower as a water fast (the last two days have been ~98-99 mg/dl and .4-.6 mol/L), but it's early in the regimen, so we'll see what happens.
For the record (and I am planning to write a post about these soon) my resting glucose will typically lower to ~75-85mg/dL on ex150. The fat doesn't do anything at all, no surprise, just my lunch meal and that's mostly the sauce. I tried without the sauce once and it barely moved the needle.
Ketones are typically 1.5-3.0 mmol/l when I've tested.
I'm not sure these matter much for fat loss, tbh. But fun to play around with.
Nothing to post in terms of hard data. March has been a difficult month for me as well; several family events, out of town visitors and one minor emergency, led to a very spotty compliance to this plan, thus I have only a few stretches of following this way of eating followed by longer days of interruptions.
I will offer my (very long-winded) experiences to the group, in lieu of more meaningful numbers. Let me preface this by saying I lost ~90 lbs between 2017-2019 (263-173 lbs) after a cancer scare (no reoccurrence, yay me) while moving to Mexico for more than 3 ½ years (5/1/2018-1/20/2021). I've done keto, carnivore, various modes of intermittent fasting, and extended fasting. My weight started creeping up as we planned our return to the US (Mexico is a wonderful place to find cheap, terrific tasting foods, so a lot of FOMO eating), and accelerated as we packed up our Mexico belongings and handed them off to a mover (who then lost a significant portion of them during a break in en route in Southern California), then the gains continued as we arrived home and started my wife's cherished 'fix up the house' plan. No floor over the slab foundation, no kitchen, a good deal of eating out, and various unproductive eating behaviors (oh, I dunno--they produced extra weight...). I was back up to 236 lbs on January 2nd this year, the house was mostly resolved, and I started extended fasting again, mostly rolling 36-60 hour fasts, interrupted with eating days where I usually stayed low carb. That, over the years was my best strategy. I was about a month in when I ran into the our author's posts on the r/saturated fat group on Reddit. Tempting. Extended fasting is simple, but not always easy. I love to cook, grill, and bake, so after that first 24 hours, I find myself knee-deep in YouTube watching prep videos of things I can't make. Having fasting-like results while still eating? Heck, sign me up!
And it's true: when compliant to the plan, I saw the scale drop about a pound a day. We know that a lot of that is water loss, but it's motivating, and I love it. My first short stab in February showed great results, and I got ready to make a concerted effort. And there is where I introduced my first confounders.
I don't like coffee. Not Caffe Latte , Americano, Cappuccino, not coffee flavored ice cream, just no. I'll make room for the occasional tiramisu, but that's about it. I get my caffeine cold straight from my Diet Coke, to the tune of two to three 12 oz servings a day. I had however, started drinking matcha tea once in awhile, so I started making a 16 oz cream matcha to plug during the day. But then I dumped 3 or four packs of Splenda into it--yummy!. Now ExFat150 is kind of a modified fat fast: on small meal, then cream ad libitum. Cream by itself is pretty filling, and fairly hard to overeat: it's almost like that's a feature, right? I turned my fat into a dessert, and it became less of, "drink cream until you're satiated," and more like, "finish a pound of this delicious creamy milkshake, and then drink more if you like!" That in itself didn't seem to affect my steady loss when I weighed myself after compliant days, however, it didn't leave me feeling full as I believe it would have if I had left the cream unsweetened. I just know I'm not doing that now. The Splenda is put away.
I also had lots of interruptions to the plan as well, and here is another area where it's very like long term fasting, or going in and out of ketosis: a day of ad lib eating will cause my weight to shoot up 2-5 pounds! our old friend water, I guess. I think a worthwhile modification would be to see how the plan responds to sodium/potassium/magnesium supplementation. I wonder if that would moderate the water loss/gain. Just as daily weight loss is a great motivator, huge gains on resumption of 'normal' eating is a de-motivator. When I'm doing long periods of rolling extended fasting, it's easier to see the actual losses as each new 'peak' is smaller than the one previous. This month I have not managed a long enough string of compliant days to feel like I've seen progress. I don't feel in any way shape or form that I've disproved the theory; I just need to get a solid three to four weeks under my belt (heh) to see what real results look like. I've started again, and when I have real numbers to contribute, I'll share them.
The splenda part especially. I wonder if that points to somehow - omg as I am typing this the satiety is setting in - cream being just super satiating and sweeteners (or too much flavor in general?) counteracting that.
You could experiment with other things to put in to give some variation without making it too delicious/sweet. Maybe a little bit of cocoa powder? Maybe just the matcha? I do like plain whipped cream but the instant coffee sure adds variety and I pick that one 80% of the time. Could be that you just have to find a combo that works for you so that it tastes good but not too good.
Regarding the demotivating short-term water weight gains, I wonder if they are actually bad. Imagine a steady fat loss line that goes down .3lb/day (in my example). Now imagine you overlay another curve where somebody gains/loses water weight constantly.
Do the water weight gains/losses cancel out the fat loss, or is the fat still being burned the whole time, and just masked?
Would be interesting to test, maybe with something like a weekly refeed.
Well, yesterday and today were just cream by itself, and hey: cream tastes fine! Just not so good that I keep drinking it for its own sake, lol. Seeking to add extra flavor to it may just be self-defeating (in my case). I could imagine a weekly refeed (especially as I have a grill outside, a freezer full of meat, and California is finally starting to show breaks in the cloud cover. A weekend (or maybe only one day) of OMAD, steak and salad, might prove interesting as a variation, but my goal right now is just to get a significant string of consecutive days under my belt. I'll check in again once I have 7-10 days in a row under my belt.
Oh, also: you say that even drinking a ton of your "milkshake" left you losing weight but you didn't hit satiety. If this is true, I think you might actually be doing it right. Maybe you just haven't had enough cream to hit satiety? As long as you're still losing, it's all good. Only if you stop losing weight/start gaining weight is it a problem. Until you hit that limit you don't know where it is.
Wow, this is insane.
Thanks :)
Have you ever tried coconut milk or coconut cream instead of heavy whipping cream?
Not for real. I tried whipping up coconut cream once, but couldn't get it to whip. It seems all the recipes out there use some sort of stabilizer.
Very insipring. I am going to give it an in-depth reading again!
are you still doing this diet? if so, what are your stats? are you hungry all the time or no? are you using organic / pasture raised / grass fed dairy or meats?
Yea, still doing it :) I basically still do the same thing, except my cream consumption has intuitively gone up as I've lost more fat (down 70-75lbs now). I'm never hungry since I usually eat cream to satiety. I've played around and am currently doing grass fed beef, but regular cream. It's somehow much easier to find good beef than good cream, it seems, maybe since almost nobody seems to buy cream lol.
FWIW USDA regulations require heavy cream to have a minimum of 36% milk fat and light cream to have a minimum of 30% milk fat.
Oh interesting. I've never actually seen anything sold as "light cream" usually only "heavy cream" and "heavy whipping cream." So maybe the 30% is considered light?
I’ve started today.
61y F trying to lose 10 pounds of fat from my middle.
I’m a typical apple shape…skinny legs and arms and carry my extra in my middle. Very frustrating.
Let’s see how this works. One year of carnivore left me with these last 10 pounds that won’t budge after a 40 pound loss.
Congrats on the 40lbs! What sort of things are you typically eating on carnivore?
Thank you! But these last 10. They will not budge.
I ate mostly ground beef, eggs, cheese on occasion and heavy cream.
Hopefully upping the fat and lowering the protein will help.
Let me know how it goes :) Can you email me your results after you've tried it? However long that is (if it doesn't work and you quit, lmk! That's a good data point as well). Just email hello@exfatloss.com. Thanks. Happy to answer any questions via email, too.
How did she get on?
You bet! Thank you for that… I feel more accountable now knowing I’ll be reporting my results.
How did it go, Cris?
So this was interesting to me, and I'm starting a trial. I'm 67 yo male, 5' 8". In 2017 I had a brush with cancer (fine now, heh), and hit 263lbs and just shy of a 40 BMI. Dirty keto, intermittent and extended fasting got me down to 175 in May of 2018 (by which time we had temporarily moved to Mexico. 2021 was our last year there, and a combination of stress and FOMO (it's incredibly cheap to eat out or in in Mexico, as long as your not in a tourist city), combined with a year of returning to, and refurbishing our California house (it was rented out while we were gone for 4 years) saw me peaking at 136 on January 2nd of 2023. No big deal, right? I just started rolling 2.5-3.5 day fasts (water and Diet Coke btw). interspersed with 1 to 2 days where I consciously strove to get ~2500-3000 kcal a day. That's eas--well, do-able. Not eating at all does get in your head after a while. So I ran across your sub stack through the r/saturated fat group and it was intriguing. Keto as she should be, if you will. I'm pretty much following your lead (150 gems 80/20 hamburger, 60 grams spinach wilted with it, and about 60g of a 'clean' marinara), regarding the one (very small, but better than nothing) meal. As I don't enjoy coffee (outside of a tiramisu), I'm making an iced matcha latte with 2 tsp matcha powder and one and a half to two cups of heavy cream, and sip on that through the day. Once it's gone, either water or maybe a slug or two of cream. The first 2 days showed waterfasting-like results (1.75-2 lbs lost each day--yes likely mostly water, but the same as I would be seeing at the start of an extended fast). Today is a family meal out, so I'll make the latte and skip the ground beef, watching what I eat at the restaurant. Then tomorrow back at it.
Nice! Did you mean you peaked at 236lbs in January? 136 sounds too low if it's pounds ;)
I had the same experience when fasting - it gets in your head. I was thinking about food all day every day starting day 3 or so. Caught myself browsing the internet for pictures of steak all day.
So the one meal, even if tiny, really makes a big psychological difference for me I think. Even compared to an all-fat fast, which this is relatively close to.
Also one thing is that I enjoy cooking, and this way I still get to cook every day. Just kind of a nicer routine to have.
Agreed on the quick water loss results. It's water, so that rate won't continue forever, but hey losing water is still good! You can definitely see water loss in the mirror and your waistline.
If I were you, I'd expect to lose water for maybe 5 days, and then the rate should go down to maybe 1/2 or 1/3 the initial water loss rate. For me it was about 1lb/day of water, and now it's about .3lb/day sustainably.
Please keep me updated!
Yes, 236 (poor editing skills). I'll keep you posted--I did leave out BG & K readings (finger stick) they are not as dramatically lower as a water fast (the last two days have been ~98-99 mg/dl and .4-.6 mol/L), but it's early in the regimen, so we'll see what happens.
For the record (and I am planning to write a post about these soon) my resting glucose will typically lower to ~75-85mg/dL on ex150. The fat doesn't do anything at all, no surprise, just my lunch meal and that's mostly the sauce. I tried without the sauce once and it barely moved the needle.
Ketones are typically 1.5-3.0 mmol/l when I've tested.
I'm not sure these matter much for fat loss, tbh. But fun to play around with.
Hey Scott, any updates?
Nothing to post in terms of hard data. March has been a difficult month for me as well; several family events, out of town visitors and one minor emergency, led to a very spotty compliance to this plan, thus I have only a few stretches of following this way of eating followed by longer days of interruptions.
I will offer my (very long-winded) experiences to the group, in lieu of more meaningful numbers. Let me preface this by saying I lost ~90 lbs between 2017-2019 (263-173 lbs) after a cancer scare (no reoccurrence, yay me) while moving to Mexico for more than 3 ½ years (5/1/2018-1/20/2021). I've done keto, carnivore, various modes of intermittent fasting, and extended fasting. My weight started creeping up as we planned our return to the US (Mexico is a wonderful place to find cheap, terrific tasting foods, so a lot of FOMO eating), and accelerated as we packed up our Mexico belongings and handed them off to a mover (who then lost a significant portion of them during a break in en route in Southern California), then the gains continued as we arrived home and started my wife's cherished 'fix up the house' plan. No floor over the slab foundation, no kitchen, a good deal of eating out, and various unproductive eating behaviors (oh, I dunno--they produced extra weight...). I was back up to 236 lbs on January 2nd this year, the house was mostly resolved, and I started extended fasting again, mostly rolling 36-60 hour fasts, interrupted with eating days where I usually stayed low carb. That, over the years was my best strategy. I was about a month in when I ran into the our author's posts on the r/saturated fat group on Reddit. Tempting. Extended fasting is simple, but not always easy. I love to cook, grill, and bake, so after that first 24 hours, I find myself knee-deep in YouTube watching prep videos of things I can't make. Having fasting-like results while still eating? Heck, sign me up!
And it's true: when compliant to the plan, I saw the scale drop about a pound a day. We know that a lot of that is water loss, but it's motivating, and I love it. My first short stab in February showed great results, and I got ready to make a concerted effort. And there is where I introduced my first confounders.
I don't like coffee. Not Caffe Latte , Americano, Cappuccino, not coffee flavored ice cream, just no. I'll make room for the occasional tiramisu, but that's about it. I get my caffeine cold straight from my Diet Coke, to the tune of two to three 12 oz servings a day. I had however, started drinking matcha tea once in awhile, so I started making a 16 oz cream matcha to plug during the day. But then I dumped 3 or four packs of Splenda into it--yummy!. Now ExFat150 is kind of a modified fat fast: on small meal, then cream ad libitum. Cream by itself is pretty filling, and fairly hard to overeat: it's almost like that's a feature, right? I turned my fat into a dessert, and it became less of, "drink cream until you're satiated," and more like, "finish a pound of this delicious creamy milkshake, and then drink more if you like!" That in itself didn't seem to affect my steady loss when I weighed myself after compliant days, however, it didn't leave me feeling full as I believe it would have if I had left the cream unsweetened. I just know I'm not doing that now. The Splenda is put away.
I also had lots of interruptions to the plan as well, and here is another area where it's very like long term fasting, or going in and out of ketosis: a day of ad lib eating will cause my weight to shoot up 2-5 pounds! our old friend water, I guess. I think a worthwhile modification would be to see how the plan responds to sodium/potassium/magnesium supplementation. I wonder if that would moderate the water loss/gain. Just as daily weight loss is a great motivator, huge gains on resumption of 'normal' eating is a de-motivator. When I'm doing long periods of rolling extended fasting, it's easier to see the actual losses as each new 'peak' is smaller than the one previous. This month I have not managed a long enough string of compliant days to feel like I've seen progress. I don't feel in any way shape or form that I've disproved the theory; I just need to get a solid three to four weeks under my belt (heh) to see what real results look like. I've started again, and when I have real numbers to contribute, I'll share them.
Very interesting, Scott!
The splenda part especially. I wonder if that points to somehow - omg as I am typing this the satiety is setting in - cream being just super satiating and sweeteners (or too much flavor in general?) counteracting that.
You could experiment with other things to put in to give some variation without making it too delicious/sweet. Maybe a little bit of cocoa powder? Maybe just the matcha? I do like plain whipped cream but the instant coffee sure adds variety and I pick that one 80% of the time. Could be that you just have to find a combo that works for you so that it tastes good but not too good.
Regarding the demotivating short-term water weight gains, I wonder if they are actually bad. Imagine a steady fat loss line that goes down .3lb/day (in my example). Now imagine you overlay another curve where somebody gains/loses water weight constantly.
Do the water weight gains/losses cancel out the fat loss, or is the fat still being burned the whole time, and just masked?
Would be interesting to test, maybe with something like a weekly refeed.
Well, yesterday and today were just cream by itself, and hey: cream tastes fine! Just not so good that I keep drinking it for its own sake, lol. Seeking to add extra flavor to it may just be self-defeating (in my case). I could imagine a weekly refeed (especially as I have a grill outside, a freezer full of meat, and California is finally starting to show breaks in the cloud cover. A weekend (or maybe only one day) of OMAD, steak and salad, might prove interesting as a variation, but my goal right now is just to get a significant string of consecutive days under my belt. I'll check in again once I have 7-10 days in a row under my belt.
Oh, also: you say that even drinking a ton of your "milkshake" left you losing weight but you didn't hit satiety. If this is true, I think you might actually be doing it right. Maybe you just haven't had enough cream to hit satiety? As long as you're still losing, it's all good. Only if you stop losing weight/start gaining weight is it a problem. Until you hit that limit you don't know where it is.
Just a thought.