ex150 trial case study: 60 y/o male loses 13lbs in 30 days
Does intense activity mitigate cheat days to a degree?
This is the fifth case study from the ex150trial. If you recall, I put out a post asking for volunteers to try the ex150 diet for 30 days. The first few have finished their trials, and this is one of them.
Previous case studies:
48 year old female loses 14.6lbs in 30 days
26 year old male loses 5-8lbs in 26 days, mostly water weight
38 y/o female loses 11lbs in 30 days eating 2,700kcal/day
37 y/o female loses 9lbs in 30 days
Subject: walks 10k steps per day
The subject didn’t lose much time. When I asked via email when he was going to start the trial, he replied “yesterday.”
His goal for the experiment: “reasonable” weight loss in a steady manner.
He had been walking 10k steps per day for months, and he continued doing this during the experiment.
Diet history included low-carb, keto, and carnivore. He was quite familiar with getting into ketosis and didn’t have any issues with adaptation.
Experiment: Very linear weight loss, hiking on vacation, cheating didn’t set him back much
A familiar pattern: rapid water weight loss the first few days, then slower, more linear progress. Overall, the subject lost 13lbs in 30 days.
Maybe the most intriguing part of his experience, in light of the other trials: although the subject cheated on the 4th of July (just like everyone else so far, heh) his weight barely budged up. He was on vacation during the last part of the experiment, and he would go on daily hikes. He cheated again during the vacation, and there isn’t even a blip in his weight.
Could this be because his 10k steps per day, and the hikes, used up all the glucose from the cheat days? Or, maybe, subject is just extraordinarily resistant to the bad effects of cheat days.
Subjective well-being: diet easy to follow, but boring, also fatigue
For our convenience, the subject drew up a pro/con list:
Pro’s
Lost 13 lbs in 1 month
Easy to follow
Snacking was impractical
Con’s
Diet is boring
Difficult to align with family preferences
Diet, combined with walking 10k steps every day, caused extreme afternoon fatigue and difficulty staying asleep
It wasn’t all rosy:
Energy was drained as the day went on and I often
felt the need to take a nap later in the afternoon.
Sleep was also very turbulent with difficulty staying asleep.
It’s possible that the cream made it difficult for the subject to eat enough. The hunger signals on ex150 are so muted that it can be hard to judge if you’re under-eating, unless you consciously make yourself sick every day (what I call “cement-truck satiety.”)
I also wonder if, due to his high activity level, the subject would benefit from more protein.
Interesting quotes
Love the pasta sauce with meat! One of my favorites and satiating.
Cream was ok in coffee, but just whipped was a bit boring.
The pasta sauce with meat just hits home for some people. I should open a restaurant. I’ve been eating it almost exclusively for nearly a year now, and it’s still amazing.
Little hunger.
Physically fine...diet is a bit boring...would like a bit more diversity.
The meal timings I think are important... the limited choices help limit grazing.
Sounds like another vote for a more interesting menu. I wonder if the simplicity is part of the effect, though: like the subject mentions, you don’t really have to think if you can graze/snack on anything.
Is it heavy cream? Snack/graze. Otherwise, no. If we were to introduce a more complex set of rules, variety might increase, but maybe the overhead of “can I have this?” or “how much of this can I have?” would increase. Maybe even just in terms of preventing the mental fatigue of deciding/debating what to eat?
Going forward:
Overall the results were nice in the weight department, but the limited food options and reduce energy level lead me to believe I need easier sources of energy than this diet provides.
What will he do going forward?
I am sticking with low protein and no oils and low fat. Carbs.
I am interested in hearing if the low-fat/high-carb approach, combined with low protein, will work for him. Low-fat is almost certainly going to be low-PUFA, and low protein/BCAAs could mean a winning combination - this is basically the potato diet by macros.
And there you have it: the fifth case study. Only a few more are still running.
Do you have much of an explanation for the variance in energy levels on ex150 for your various participants? I've done keto and also done 20k daily steps + resistance training but not at the same time. Indeed, during the second one I was frying a lot of rice in a lot of bacon fat. If these excellent posts manage to nudge me into becoming an experimental subject for ex150butter (I love butter, and will happily eat chunks off a knife the way normal people eat cheese) I suppose we can test how physical activity pure fat can sustain.
Re: "Is it heavy cream? Snack/graze. Otherwise, no. If we were to introduce a more complex set of rules, variety might increase"
I'm doing something like this diet, and while I love heavy cream, I am definitely in the market for some kind of snack that has the traits of heavy cream that make it good for this diet, but perhaps has salt and a crunch, which is what I find myself craving. I am not sure what fits that profile. Maybe 0 calorie dill pickles? (no protein, no fat, a little fiber?) Pork rinds? (some protein, fat, no carbs?) Anything else? There are tons of "keto snacks" but they tend to have enough carbs (though lower than normal snacks) and protein that I think they would disrupt the essentially-fasting mechanism you have going on.