My cholesterol and LDL have always been “high” by modern standards, even long before I ever did keto. E.g. I tested LDL over 200 and TC over 300 in 2010, years before I ever started keto.
On the other hand, even on a 90% cream diet w/ 200g of saturated fat per day, I’ve never reached 400 TC, and only once an outlier of 307 LDL (others all under 300). So I’m not one of those “crazy high” as in 700 or more LDL/TC people that are out there.
I’ve done 2 CAC scans and both came back with a perfect 0 score. I have not done soft plaque because it costs like $2000, and recent studies seem to show that the technique is very unreliable and the interpretation step can completely change the results.. in the Dave Feldman study w/ the Cleerly scan.
In short, I’ve never believed the lipid hypothesis, and I probably will never worry about it. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test: people were eating Sat Fat for centuries before CVD became a big issue. The timeline fits seed oils, but not SFAs or MUFAs.
I just read about a study that was done in mice fed extra CLA from dairy fat, and it completely reversed (not just slowed, but eliminated) all their atherosclerosis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16182300/
150 g beef is probably 25-30 g protein. Which is about half of what is typically recommended. Question is why restrict protein to this level? There are some diets that prescribe 1 g protein per 2-3 g fat.
Aha! You are correct, but the ad-lib heavy cream provides about another 20g of protein (for me). This adds up to about 40-45g/day for me at 6’1, which seems to be enough.
The reason is: it’s enough to be sustainable, and low enough to allow for the beneficial effects of protein restriction to set in. These seem to set in between 6-10% of TEE in protein, depending on the experiment.
tl;dr, in certain metabolically messed up people like myself, reducing protein intake can "unblock" the metabolism and lead to weight loss. In mouse studies, they can prevent and even reverse the obesogenic effects of certain "western style high fat diets" with that technique (and others).
I myself am amazed by protein recommendations that are going ever upwards. Most people I know eat much less protein than 0.8 g/kg and seem quite healthy even in old age of above 80.
As an N=1 experience: my gall bladder had been removed years before I had tried ketogenic diets. Despite that I have never had any problem with eating fat (not even when first started ketogenic diet cold turkey). Actually I can eat more fat in one sitting than my wife who has gall bladder (and we are roughly the same size). Moreover if she overeats fat she gets nausated which lingers for several hours, while I just feel really full for 30-60 minutes. On the other hand she can eat way more protein in one sitting than me. Of course I don't think having no gall bladder causes any of these, I just want to note that personal variability (most likely matters the amount of bile produces by the liver) has bigger effect than having or not having gall bladder.
Paradoxically this diet may be even better suited for people without gall bladder than other high fat diets. The gall bladder itself doesn't produce anything, it only stores bile. So removing it doesn't reduce the amount of bile produced, having no gall bladder only removes the body's ability to dose the bile. If someone does the ex150 as you do (drink / eat the cream over the day instead of 1-2 meals) it actually aligns better with the digestive system's ability to digest fat when one doesn't have gall bladder than doing a 8/16 intermittent or omad ketogenic diet. But again, as a personal experience I have never had problem eating twice a day (never tried omad though).
As a different topic I've noticed that you don't mention your monthly refeeds. I know that those are not part of the diet, but may or may not contribute to the fact that you can sustain this diet for a long time. They can have psychological effect, and also nutritional one both on macro- (especially protein) and micronutrient levels. As far as I know you've never done ex150 for multiple months without refeed, correct?
And a small nitpick: "Almost no carbohydrates" is not really true, at least in the realm of ketogenic diets (ie. < 20g carbs). HWC has roughly 3g carb per 100g and as you tend to drink 500-600 grams a day that alone is roughly 15g carbs. The added vegetable adds another 2-5g carbs. So that's roughly 15-25g carbs per day. Which is of course super low compared to normal diets, but it's pretty standard among ketogenic diets. And significantly higher than in carnivore diets. (But of course carnivore is also not a 0 carbs diet as eggs contains 0.5g carbs per egg and even muscle meat contains traces amount of carbs which can add up to a few grams per day when eating the 800-1000g meat which is usually recommended for a carnivore diet).
But this doesn't change the "diet is extremely ketogenic" fact. As the carb amount is still very low, and because high protein tends to lower ketones this diet is most likely more ketogenic than most "ketogenic" diet out there, including carnivore. Especially because it eliminates any possible carb creep by limiting the variables (it is easy to eat "hidden carbs" especially in the US with the "per serving size" nutrition tables).
Interesting to know about the gall bladder thing, shows what I know. Maybe I’ll start recommending it for people who don’t have one?
I did try not doing the refeeds when i first started plateauing, cause I thought they were holding me back. But it didn’t seem to do much, I just plateaued longer haha. This first got me to think about “settling points.”
Psychologically I think you’re right, it makes it much easier this way. But I also am not quite happy with the way I’m doing refeeds right now, so not sure I want to recommend the way I do it haha. It feels too “binge”-y.
I think if the refeeds do anything it is exactly because they are "binge"-y, ie. you let your body to get whatever it wants. Otherwise it would be just guesswork of what "should" be beneficial which may or may not be the correct guess. Or what is your idea for a "more proper" refeed?
I've seen your idea in the other comment for doing them every 2 weeks, but my experience with "dirty" vs. "clean eating" is that after eating dirty for a while it takes roughly 2 weeks for my body to properly reset. So doing it every 2 weeks would be too frequent, at least for me. On the other hand I've never tried to just 1 day of dirty eating, maybe it would get back on track faster?
Maybe so. What I dislike is that I tend to buy more than I can eat in 2 days and then it stretches to 3.5-4.5 days. The latter half of which I feel sick & bloated, but I don't want to throw all that nice food away that I just bought.
Agree that 2 weeks is probably not enough, which is why I am not doing that so far.
I seem to be able to get back on track quickly if it's just 1 meal or a minor cheat day, but even 1 very heavy cheat day seems to set me back a week or more.
Yeah, I know the problem. I've tried to limit it by limiting the rate of eating them, which helps with the "sick & bloated" part, but then it means that it's not 3-4 days, but 7-8. And of course with the risk of getting into the habit of eating these foods which makes it more likely to buy them when you should not.
I think the "make yourself sick" is may not be a mandatory part :) Rather the "let yourself to eat things which you usually don't". So I think some tweak can be done in this regard. Of course getting sick of a certain food is definitely a sure way to tell that you have eaten enough of it (just like the "cement truck satiety" when eating too much cream).
My journey / diet / preferences are different than yours so this appears a bit differently for me, but over the years I realized that regardless how much I'm comfortable with a given diet, and regardless how I think it is totally fine to do for a long time, after a period comes the urge to have some cheats (even if those cheats would be considered as good adherence by others). I've never made these regular as you so sometimes it take more time sometimes less. But exactly because they are not regular for me the "complication" is that they may stay longer. Especially as because it's less bingy for me (as I don't plan to have a cheat weekend, just eat some food which I consider cheating but otherwise like) the drawbacks doesn't come instantly and comes gradually. So I may consider some things fine and keep eating them and only later realized that I should have not. On the other hand over the years the drawbacks comes slower and slower (or in some rare cases do not come at all) so most likely I'm still doing something right.
One part about ex150 I still don't understand is the "re-feed" you have mentioned. It sounds like you have extra protein during that time, and I wonder what the reasoning is for this. Have you ever just skipped refeeds and see what happens?
Initially I did the refeeds cause people were telling me I’d die from so little protein. Plus, it’s easy to limit yourself if you can just have whatever at most 30 days away.
But since then I’ve become even more convinced they’re not strictly needed and that I’m somehow doing them wrong/suboptimally.
I’m thinking about what to do instead, but I haven’t found something obviously better.
I have skipped them in the past, and just plateaued. It’s not that I would just lose more weight if I didn’t refeed, seems like. I’d just scrape along my current “settling point” more.
I've asked our host about this in the past. He seems to use the "refeed" simply as a "vacation" from the ex150 (i.e. to try foods he hasn't eaten in awhile or that he misses) and to get a bit more protein into his diet.
Yea it evolved from “actual protein refeed” to mostly “pig out for way too long.”
These days I feel sick the latter half of almost every refeed. I’m thinking on how to structure it instead, cause this feels suboptimal & annoying. But given how metabolic processes can take some time to kick in, I don’t know if e.g. doing smaller refeeds every 2 weeks would work. I suspect that 1 refeed every week would completely kill it?
I think about it a lot in terms of traction on tires - the function of an ABS/ESP system is basically to put torque on the wheel less often, because each torquing causes slippage, and “letting the wheel roll” establishes traction again.
In motorcycle racing, this for a while led to the dominance of “big bang” engines that would fire all cylinders at the same time, over the seemingly “smoother” engines firing cylinders sequentially - thereby causing more slippage and less time for the rear tire to “dig in” and develop traction again.
You could argue I’m doing “big bang” refeeds instead of “screamer” (I believe that’s what the others are called due to the engine noise) refeeds.
I recently tried this diet (cold turkey, which may or may not have been a good idea), but I stopped after two days because I got so sick of cream. I just couldn't get enough calories through cream. (The beef slop was delicious though and I think I'd never get sick of it.)
Do people have ideas what to use instead of cream? I think even sour cream would be a huge improvement for me, but not sure what the effects of lactic acid are.
One of my craziest hyperphagia experiments personally has been with sour cream. I think I ate three pounds and only stopped because I ran out and the store was closed. I couldn't tell you what exactly it was, the protein/carb content, the citric acid (it had pretty clean ingredients, I think that was it) but it's pretty much the opposite of cream for me.
So I wouldn't recommend it per se. On the other hand, hey, try it! Worst case you have the same experience and then you know haha.
You could whip the cream and freeze it, mix with some additives (splenda, frozen low carb berries or protein powder that's flavored), and have tasty ice cream.
Can you talk a bit about cholesterol numbers and any heart related scans you’ve done that would show calcified or soft plaque levels.
My cholesterol and LDL have always been “high” by modern standards, even long before I ever did keto. E.g. I tested LDL over 200 and TC over 300 in 2010, years before I ever started keto.
On the other hand, even on a 90% cream diet w/ 200g of saturated fat per day, I’ve never reached 400 TC, and only once an outlier of 307 LDL (others all under 300). So I’m not one of those “crazy high” as in 700 or more LDL/TC people that are out there.
I’ve done 2 CAC scans and both came back with a perfect 0 score. I have not done soft plaque because it costs like $2000, and recent studies seem to show that the technique is very unreliable and the interpretation step can completely change the results.. in the Dave Feldman study w/ the Cleerly scan.
In short, I’ve never believed the lipid hypothesis, and I probably will never worry about it. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test: people were eating Sat Fat for centuries before CVD became a big issue. The timeline fits seed oils, but not SFAs or MUFAs.
I just read about a study that was done in mice fed extra CLA from dairy fat, and it completely reversed (not just slowed, but eliminated) all their atherosclerosis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16182300/
Very impressive! I saw a similar study (maybe the same?) a week ago.
Explains why dairy is so good haha :)
Did you take a stinky on that plate in the thumbnail
lol no it's AI
Too late me and the brolice are on the way to investigate
150 g beef is probably 25-30 g protein. Which is about half of what is typically recommended. Question is why restrict protein to this level? There are some diets that prescribe 1 g protein per 2-3 g fat.
Aha! You are correct, but the ad-lib heavy cream provides about another 20g of protein (for me). This adds up to about 40-45g/day for me at 6’1, which seems to be enough.
The reason is: it’s enough to be sustainable, and low enough to allow for the beneficial effects of protein restriction to set in. These seem to set in between 6-10% of TEE in protein, depending on the experiment.
Beneficial effects of protein restrictions at 6-10% E? I should be very interested in knowing more.
https://www.exfatloss.com/p/please-eat-less-protein
tl;dr, in certain metabolically messed up people like myself, reducing protein intake can "unblock" the metabolism and lead to weight loss. In mouse studies, they can prevent and even reverse the obesogenic effects of certain "western style high fat diets" with that technique (and others).
I myself am amazed by protein recommendations that are going ever upwards. Most people I know eat much less protein than 0.8 g/kg and seem quite healthy even in old age of above 80.
Are you using organic cream? Any thoughts about organic vs. conventional?
No, not organic. I think organic would probably be nice, so if you have an affordable organic variety available, go for it.
"People without gall bladder"
As an N=1 experience: my gall bladder had been removed years before I had tried ketogenic diets. Despite that I have never had any problem with eating fat (not even when first started ketogenic diet cold turkey). Actually I can eat more fat in one sitting than my wife who has gall bladder (and we are roughly the same size). Moreover if she overeats fat she gets nausated which lingers for several hours, while I just feel really full for 30-60 minutes. On the other hand she can eat way more protein in one sitting than me. Of course I don't think having no gall bladder causes any of these, I just want to note that personal variability (most likely matters the amount of bile produces by the liver) has bigger effect than having or not having gall bladder.
Paradoxically this diet may be even better suited for people without gall bladder than other high fat diets. The gall bladder itself doesn't produce anything, it only stores bile. So removing it doesn't reduce the amount of bile produced, having no gall bladder only removes the body's ability to dose the bile. If someone does the ex150 as you do (drink / eat the cream over the day instead of 1-2 meals) it actually aligns better with the digestive system's ability to digest fat when one doesn't have gall bladder than doing a 8/16 intermittent or omad ketogenic diet. But again, as a personal experience I have never had problem eating twice a day (never tried omad though).
As a different topic I've noticed that you don't mention your monthly refeeds. I know that those are not part of the diet, but may or may not contribute to the fact that you can sustain this diet for a long time. They can have psychological effect, and also nutritional one both on macro- (especially protein) and micronutrient levels. As far as I know you've never done ex150 for multiple months without refeed, correct?
And a small nitpick: "Almost no carbohydrates" is not really true, at least in the realm of ketogenic diets (ie. < 20g carbs). HWC has roughly 3g carb per 100g and as you tend to drink 500-600 grams a day that alone is roughly 15g carbs. The added vegetable adds another 2-5g carbs. So that's roughly 15-25g carbs per day. Which is of course super low compared to normal diets, but it's pretty standard among ketogenic diets. And significantly higher than in carnivore diets. (But of course carnivore is also not a 0 carbs diet as eggs contains 0.5g carbs per egg and even muscle meat contains traces amount of carbs which can add up to a few grams per day when eating the 800-1000g meat which is usually recommended for a carnivore diet).
But this doesn't change the "diet is extremely ketogenic" fact. As the carb amount is still very low, and because high protein tends to lower ketones this diet is most likely more ketogenic than most "ketogenic" diet out there, including carnivore. Especially because it eliminates any possible carb creep by limiting the variables (it is easy to eat "hidden carbs" especially in the US with the "per serving size" nutrition tables).
Interesting to know about the gall bladder thing, shows what I know. Maybe I’ll start recommending it for people who don’t have one?
I did try not doing the refeeds when i first started plateauing, cause I thought they were holding me back. But it didn’t seem to do much, I just plateaued longer haha. This first got me to think about “settling points.”
Psychologically I think you’re right, it makes it much easier this way. But I also am not quite happy with the way I’m doing refeeds right now, so not sure I want to recommend the way I do it haha. It feels too “binge”-y.
I think if the refeeds do anything it is exactly because they are "binge"-y, ie. you let your body to get whatever it wants. Otherwise it would be just guesswork of what "should" be beneficial which may or may not be the correct guess. Or what is your idea for a "more proper" refeed?
I've seen your idea in the other comment for doing them every 2 weeks, but my experience with "dirty" vs. "clean eating" is that after eating dirty for a while it takes roughly 2 weeks for my body to properly reset. So doing it every 2 weeks would be too frequent, at least for me. On the other hand I've never tried to just 1 day of dirty eating, maybe it would get back on track faster?
Maybe so. What I dislike is that I tend to buy more than I can eat in 2 days and then it stretches to 3.5-4.5 days. The latter half of which I feel sick & bloated, but I don't want to throw all that nice food away that I just bought.
Agree that 2 weeks is probably not enough, which is why I am not doing that so far.
I seem to be able to get back on track quickly if it's just 1 meal or a minor cheat day, but even 1 very heavy cheat day seems to set me back a week or more.
Yeah, I know the problem. I've tried to limit it by limiting the rate of eating them, which helps with the "sick & bloated" part, but then it means that it's not 3-4 days, but 7-8. And of course with the risk of getting into the habit of eating these foods which makes it more likely to buy them when you should not.
Maybe you're right and the "making myself sick, but not that often" thing is structural.
Btw feeling sick right now from butter cookies, chocolates, rice & beans, cheese, ..
I think the "make yourself sick" is may not be a mandatory part :) Rather the "let yourself to eat things which you usually don't". So I think some tweak can be done in this regard. Of course getting sick of a certain food is definitely a sure way to tell that you have eaten enough of it (just like the "cement truck satiety" when eating too much cream).
My journey / diet / preferences are different than yours so this appears a bit differently for me, but over the years I realized that regardless how much I'm comfortable with a given diet, and regardless how I think it is totally fine to do for a long time, after a period comes the urge to have some cheats (even if those cheats would be considered as good adherence by others). I've never made these regular as you so sometimes it take more time sometimes less. But exactly because they are not regular for me the "complication" is that they may stay longer. Especially as because it's less bingy for me (as I don't plan to have a cheat weekend, just eat some food which I consider cheating but otherwise like) the drawbacks doesn't come instantly and comes gradually. So I may consider some things fine and keep eating them and only later realized that I should have not. On the other hand over the years the drawbacks comes slower and slower (or in some rare cases do not come at all) so most likely I'm still doing something right.
One part about ex150 I still don't understand is the "re-feed" you have mentioned. It sounds like you have extra protein during that time, and I wonder what the reasoning is for this. Have you ever just skipped refeeds and see what happens?
Initially I did the refeeds cause people were telling me I’d die from so little protein. Plus, it’s easy to limit yourself if you can just have whatever at most 30 days away.
But since then I’ve become even more convinced they’re not strictly needed and that I’m somehow doing them wrong/suboptimally.
I’m thinking about what to do instead, but I haven’t found something obviously better.
I have skipped them in the past, and just plateaued. It’s not that I would just lose more weight if I didn’t refeed, seems like. I’d just scrape along my current “settling point” more.
I've asked our host about this in the past. He seems to use the "refeed" simply as a "vacation" from the ex150 (i.e. to try foods he hasn't eaten in awhile or that he misses) and to get a bit more protein into his diet.
Yea it evolved from “actual protein refeed” to mostly “pig out for way too long.”
These days I feel sick the latter half of almost every refeed. I’m thinking on how to structure it instead, cause this feels suboptimal & annoying. But given how metabolic processes can take some time to kick in, I don’t know if e.g. doing smaller refeeds every 2 weeks would work. I suspect that 1 refeed every week would completely kill it?
I think about it a lot in terms of traction on tires - the function of an ABS/ESP system is basically to put torque on the wheel less often, because each torquing causes slippage, and “letting the wheel roll” establishes traction again.
In motorcycle racing, this for a while led to the dominance of “big bang” engines that would fire all cylinders at the same time, over the seemingly “smoother” engines firing cylinders sequentially - thereby causing more slippage and less time for the rear tire to “dig in” and develop traction again.
You could argue I’m doing “big bang” refeeds instead of “screamer” (I believe that’s what the others are called due to the engine noise) refeeds.
I recently tried this diet (cold turkey, which may or may not have been a good idea), but I stopped after two days because I got so sick of cream. I just couldn't get enough calories through cream. (The beef slop was delicious though and I think I'd never get sick of it.)
Do people have ideas what to use instead of cream? I think even sour cream would be a huge improvement for me, but not sure what the effects of lactic acid are.
One of my craziest hyperphagia experiments personally has been with sour cream. I think I ate three pounds and only stopped because I ran out and the store was closed. I couldn't tell you what exactly it was, the protein/carb content, the citric acid (it had pretty clean ingredients, I think that was it) but it's pretty much the opposite of cream for me.
So I wouldn't recommend it per se. On the other hand, hey, try it! Worst case you have the same experience and then you know haha.
I've tried it with sour cream and also creme fraiche and it seemed to work the same for me (ex150 works well for me).
On the other hand I think our host tried sour cream and it didn't work for him, he got really hungry?
You could whip the cream and freeze it, mix with some additives (splenda, frozen low carb berries or protein powder that's flavored), and have tasty ice cream.
I do wonder if this would make it "too palatable" but experimentation is the mother of invention..